Wine elaboration

The culmination of a long year’s work in the vineyards is the harvest of beautiful, healthy and ripe grapes.

Most of the quality and typicity of the wine is determined by the terroir and the work of the vine, the role of the winemaker is to sublimate this potential.

I often compare the work of a winemaker to that of a chef, who, after choosing the finest ingredients on the market, will carry out the transformations that will delight the client’s palate. The only differences: our vats are more imposing than the cook’s pots and pans, and the time scale is over several months and not a few hours.

But the similarities are obvious: the need for skill and manic care, constant monitoring of the evolution of the transformations through tasting, adjustments during and at the end of the process, hygiene and cleanliness, adapted equipment. The devil is in the details, and in addition to the indispensable quality of the raw materials used, it is in both cases the succession of elementary operations that will make a great dish or a great wine a success.

When working in the winery, half of the working time is devoted to “doing the dishes”: washing and sterilizing pumps, pipes, vats, tubs, buckets, and various utensils. It is probably the same in the chef’s kitchen…

The most curious will discover in more detail our winemaking process in the following pages:

• The harvest
• White wine vinification
• Red wine vinification
• Rosé wine vinification