The ancestral cellar of 1397

The cellar of the old building dates from 1397. There, we mature the different Chasselas in wooden tuns with a capacity of anything from 1,800 to 7,500 litres. The grapes of each vineyard plot are pressed and made into wine separately in order to preserve the distinctive features and character of each terroir for our different selections. The wines are matured there for anything from 10 to 12 months.

The new cellar built in 2009

The new cellar is divided over three floors and enables us to work by gravity in the different stages of preparing our wines. On reaching the upper terrace, the white grapes fall directly into the wine press. The red grapes are picked off, whole, from the bunch and fall into the different wooden vats shaped like truncated cones, also situated on the lower floor.

The steeping of the red grapes then begins cold in order to extract the pure aromas and fine tannins. Following fermentation, which takes from 20 to 30 days, the juices flow down by gravity to the basement in the wine barrel storehouse for maturing for anything from 11 to 22 months depending on the wines. The wine storehouse is equipped with a heat and moisture control system. The bottling is carried out on the ground floor with a peristaltic pump to avoid spoiling the structure of the wines.

The wine storehouse with barrels

We select our barrels according to each grape variety. The geographical origin of the different types of wood, the age of the oak they come from, the method of drying the wood, of making the barrel and the warming that will take place inside the barrel will all have a big impact on the wine, when it comes to both its structure and its aromas.

For white wines, we work on the mineral character of the wines with blends of 3 types of French wood for light and long warming to avoid too much aromatic impact on the wines. For red wines, we work with two types of 228-litre barrels. For the Pinots Noirs, we select wood from the Tronçais forest, which promote liveliness and mineral character, with a medium warming to give the wine a slightly toasted flavour. For the Gamaret, Merlot, Cabernet Franc and Syrah, we work with wood from central France, originating from the Belin and Nièvre forests, also for medium warming, in order to promote the expression of the fruit with a nice tension, a little additional aromatic complexity and a controlled toasting of the wine.

New cellar built in 2016

Our new vinotheque gathering all the years of the estate from 1950 to today, a real memory of time!