A wine owes its character to the potential of its soil and how it’s interpreted by the winemaker. I often compare winemaking to music — the results depends both on the musical score and the musician. Reducing the equation to just these two parameters is a simplification that I can easily overlook, but it ignores […]
During the month of January, you’ll find us doing little else than pruning. The season is not yet behind us and I thought it might be interesting to share with you the specificities of pruning in the “gobelet” fashion (also called bush vine). As you may already be aware of, pruning is a crucial activity […]
« The year was late due to a cold and wet spring and a flowering that was almost 15 days behind a normal year. This was followed by a dry summer that gave way to a beautiful sunny September with cool nights: a perfect recipe for deeply colored grapes that maintained acidity into maturity. Spring rains […]
When we plant a vineyard, we are making decisions for 20, 30 or 50 years. The choices we make need to be considered carefully because beyond ourselves, they often engage generations to come. When you think about it, this kind of decision is truly an anachronism in a society that is increasingly fast, where the […]
What does the 2012 vintage look like? If I had a nickel for every time someone asked me that question! But the truth is I really can’t answer until everything has been harvested and is in the winery. However, here are some observations about the harvest that is just beginning. We find ourselves at the […]
I had the pleasure of showing James Molesworth of Wine Spectator around our appellation earlier this month, and in showing him the different terroirs in Costieres it got me thinking that it might be a subject that would interest more than a few wine nerds. So here it goes… Costières de Nîmes is most southern […]
Fermentation with or without stems? The answer may seem obvious given that destemmers have been considered a true improvement and the elimination of everything but the grapes has been a “must” for great wines lately. And yet … During our recent working vacations in California and Burgundy we met a handful of winemakers that swear by whole cluster fermentation. Seduced by their […]
Here we are at the very beginning of our harvest, and we winemakers are already impatient to read the quality of our vintage, even though we can only talk about the potential of the grapes to date. So these are my observations thus far. This year’s winter gave us enough cold for a solid period […]
Today is August 23rd in Costieres de Nimes and it’s time to gear up the winery. We’ll be starting our vinification of Viognier we picked last Thursday & Friday and that we put in cold storage over the weekend. We do this in order to get grapes at a nice cold temperature which prevents oxidation […]
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