Dernière mise à jour : 18/12/10
Tour du Bon 2007 Tous droits réservés
The street-level cellar, traditional in our area, is surrounded and protected by domestic buildings. It has been modernised to meet the demands of constantly enhanced production quality and is temperature controlled at 16C. Our primary concern when making wine is obtaining good quality grapes. The way our grape varieties have adapted to the terroir has given them a distinct personality, and low yields (30 hl/ha) will intensify this. The work carried out in the vineyard all year round will enable each variety to reach maturity in good condition. If the unpredictable climate is on our side, this only makes the winemaker's life easier. The main thing is to quickly realise the vintage's potential, in order to find the right balance for it. White or ros wine vinification: The main aim of direct pressure is the finesse and minimum colour extraction in the wine. Low yields concentrate the grape's flavour, therefore it is not necessary to subject it to cold maceration, which would intensify the flavours and weigh down the structure in the mouth. Controlling fermentation temperatures will help to preserve the primary grape flavours, which are so attractive on the nose. Malo-lactic fermentation takes place in order to favour the wine's length in the mouth in relation to its liveliness. It is also a good idea to work under cover in order to retain the wine's freshness and finesse, which is why we mature the wine in adapted tanks and bottle it rapidly. Red wine vinification: All the work is done upstream, in the vineyard. Traditional vinification is merely an expression of this. The estate's reds are intended for ageing, so we need to extract from the grape anything that will assist this ageing process. Most of the components are contained in the skin (colour, tannins, flavours). The grapes are destalked. The reds are vinified in cement tanks, the real workhorses of the cellar. Then, after cold maceration (19C), which allows the fruit (heart of the wine) to be extracted, warm maceration with gentle breaking up of the crust (pigeage) and daily pumping over (remontage) during fermentation by indigenous yeasts (10 to 15 days at 28C) will decide the wine's richness and personality, and make it possible to emphasise the terroir character. Maturation in large oak barrels after malo-lactic fermentation will increase the complexity of flavours and refine the coarser substances, in order to obtain a wine that is simultaneously rich and fine at bottling.