Winemaking at Château IBJ

For the last 12 years the grapes have been sold to the co-op and gone into the soup to make rosé. So we have no idea of historic wine quality.

The varietal is Syrah and we want to make around 500 litres of Red and 150 litres of Rosé (because we like it).

After destemming, we put the grapes in the 1000 litre tank and lightly sulphured it, around 3g.
After about half an hour we bled off 150 litres of grape must into a 200 litre tank and chilled it as much as our technology allowed. Very sophisticated technology - frozen bottles of water and a wet cotton sheet! We added approx 4 gs of enzyme to aid settling or debourbage. We then covered it and left it overnight. After about 12 hours it looked like this. It is still grape juice at this point.



Back to the red wine. After we had bled off the rosé, we then added 250g of yeast to the red grapes. Lallemand Lalvin GRE selection ICV, which is a selection originally from Cornas and promotes fruitiness in Rhone style wines.

We mixed it into the grapes, covered the tank (but not airtight), and left it overnight.

By 7am the next morning the wine was starting to gently bubble and hum and had warmed up to 26°C. I felt like a parent with a newborn baby!

Minervois tasting

It's that time of year again when the Chai at Homps, the shop window of the Minervois, organises blind tastings to select wines for sale for the coming year. There were 223 wines being tasted and about 40 tasters, most of them local vignerons who may, unknowingly, be judging their own wines!

I was tasting AOC reds from 4 - 5 euros and the star wine in the flight came from the Cave Co-operative in Argeliers. Their 2007 Marcelin Albert sells for 4,90€ and with ripe fruit,smooth elegant tannins and a lick of spicy oak, this is great value. Marcelin Albert is feted as the leader of the 1907 vignerons revolt and it is his face that adorns the label. That is the worst thing about the wine. Also good was 2006 Cuvée des Clots from Chateau de Puicheric. I detected a touch of oak here too and plenty of ripe, smooth fruit. Unoaked and brimming with easy, accessible fruit was Domaine Cavailles 2007. Worth stocking up on for summer BBQs. And finally, Les Trois Bloisons 2008 Minervois was fruity, smooth, easy drinking. Simple, yes, but who cares for under 4 euros a bottle?

Kind of the top Minervois reds was Chateau Beaufort, 2003 (I forget the cuvée name). Sumptuous and with lively fruit, despite the age, and an enticing nose of the garrigue.

Spring in the air, so it's good to note a couple of fine rosés. Chateau Ste Eulalie is a perennial favourite and the 2009 does not disappoint. Vibrant pink with oodles of red fruits and a fine backbone of tannin. Paler and more elegant but with lots of round summer fruit mid-palate was Chateau Villerambert 2009. Coup de coeur for the tasters, including me.

That fabulous fungi

These little beauties were waved under my nose when I popped round to the neighbours, Didier and Marie Pierre Frances, for supper last weekend. 

The pungent, earthy smell and flavour of truffles is unforgettable and is what makes them so highly desirable. These truffles were found near St Chinian - dug up by a dog that belongs to Marie-Pierre's uncle. M-P washed and dried them and chopped them finely before scrambling them with eggs that had been stored with the truffles for a couple of days so as to absorb some of the truffley character. 

This scented, simple dish was undoubtedly the best scrambled eggs I have ever tasted. And all washed down by a deliciously fresh, fruity rosé from the Frances family property, Domaine Camberaud.