Description
CELLAR INFORMATION One day of cold soak (10ºC) followed by alcoholic fermentation (26-28ºC) for 9-10 days with regular ‘remontage’ and a single ‘delastage’. Post fermentation extended maceration (28ºC) for 3 weeks followed by malolactic fermentation in 300L new oak barrels whilst we also employed a 1000L clay amphora for the first time. We also filled 2 new French oak ‘barrel integrale’ by gravity and directly from the sorting table and positioned them on our oxo-line system. This increases the harmonisation of the oak from the start of the fermentation process and gives the wine more structure. After malolactic fermentation was complete, the wine was racked off its lees into barrel (40% new, 60% second/third-fill) where it will now age for the next 12-14 months VINEYARD INFORMATION We commenced harvest at dawn on the 23rd September picking the old vines at Plince and with a large team and were finished by mid-afternoon. We then continued the following morning 24th September with the old vines at Mazeyres, finishing just before the light faded. The next day 26th September we picked all the young vines at both Plince and Mazeyres and so completed the 2019 harvest in just 3 days. In the winery, the fruit was carefully loaded from small baskets onto a first-sorting table and then de-stemmed using our precision CUBE system followed by a berry hand-sorting table and a gentle crushing before arriving in the fermentation tanks by gravity. The average yield was approximately 35hl/h for the older vines although not all of the fruit will go into the Grand Vin and 25hl/h for the younger vines, which will only enter into the second’ wine.
