Winning Corbières in Narbonne

Last Monday I spent a very hot and sticky hour at the CIVL offices in Narbonne, tasting a selection of Corbières. All the wines had won a gold medal in the Concours interprofessonnel des Vins de Corbères.

It's always difficult tasting in the heat and while there is usually enough ice to keep whites and rosés fresh, reds suffer more unless the producers have the time to play the hokey-kokey with ice buckets for them too. My favourite reds were from two estates that I already know well. Ollieux Romanis Prestige 2009 was beautifully balanced with silky tannins and a minerally, spicy complexity. Château de Cendrillon Inèdite also had lovely elegant tannins and excellent concentration of flavour to support the oak. Lots there but not overextracted at all. The Cave co-op at Gruissan had managed to get the temperature just right for their Les Pujots 2010, an attractive spicy, tarry wine with lots of red/black fuit.

Château des Amandières Corbières was from 2011 and was inky and brimming with vibrant fruit, thanks to its youth and to carbonic maceration for Carignan and Syrah and cold soaking for Grenache. Should be delicious in 6 months. Chateau Vieux Moulin Les Ailes 2010 was very concentrated and extracted with plum/plum flavours but I found the tannins rather stewy. Similarly extracted and very powerful was En Sol Majeur from Domaine du Grand Arc in Cucugnan. 60% Grenache, 40% Syrah, aged in oak for a year. No sulphur added until the bottling. Inky, minerally and needing a knife and fork to consume it. Not my style, too OTT, but I'd like to retaste in cooler conditions.

I was pleased to taste the Rosé and red from Domaine Combe Grande in Camplong d'Aude. My local wine shop in Argeliers, Bouchon et Tradition had raved about the red and indeed it is a lovely wine, appealing red/black fruit, a touch of spice and well-managed tannins and all for under 6€. It was their Rosé that won the gold and very nice it was too - fresh, candied with a herbal nose. Château Canos is well known for their Rosé - it accounts for 85% of their production - so no surprise that it had won a gong. Rosé made from press rather than saignée (difficult to do saignée when you only make 15% red!) and from Grenache Gris and Noir. Refreshing with lots of strawberry and redcurrant flavours, and a touch of herbs.

The only whites I tasted were from Roque Sestière who are better known for their whites than their reds. Their Vieilles Vignes white, made from 55% Maccabeu, 35% Grenache, 10% Roussanne was delicious with ripe apple and peach flavours, a hint of almond and a minerally edge.

Floraison

Some arty shots of flowering in our Carignan vineyard. Taken last week.

Domaine Lou Cayla

So here it is, our first vintage. 100% Syrah, unoaked and bottled on the 3rd May. All 373 bottles of it! Plus the 153 bottles of Rosé that were bottled in March.

It has been a huge learning curve. Not just the viticulture and winemaking but also battling our way through all the paperwork that goes with it. Despite the tiny quantities, we have done it all by the book. One of the most difficult decisions was the name. We chose Lou Cayla (pronounced Kyla) because it is the name of the hill which we can see from our bedroom window and it is right beside our vines. It is a very important archaeological site and you can still see the traces of an ancient hilltop settlement dating back to 900 B. C.

So what are the wines like? The red is deep, inky purple with black cherry and olive on the nose. Rich and full bodied with deep plum and black cherry fruit and firm but not obtrusive tannins. The rosé is a very pretty medium pink with attractive red fruits on nose and palate. Rich and vinous for a rosé (it is over 14% alcohol) it is destined to be consumed pool-side by our many visitors over the summer.

Santé! 

Extraction

The red wine has finished alcoholic fermentation. In fact, it had largely finished after just 6 days, a bit quicker than expected. We have just got the analysis back from the lab and figures are 13,64% alcohol, pH 3,53 and total acidity (expressed as sulphuric) 4,87. The wine hasn't gone through MLF yet.

We did 2 pumpovers a day during fermentation and left the lid off the tank all the time to stop the must from getting too hot. Average fermentation temperature was 27°C. We also carried out délestage (rack and return) twice at the height of fermentation. This process helps extract colour and fruit although to be honest the colour was very deep anyway. It also oxygenates the must and keeps the ferment going. Another reason why we did délestage was to control the temperature. Also, it was interesting to see how much free run juice there was.



People often remove pips during délestage but as the grapes were mostly whole there weren't any pips to remove. Did put a filter (yes, it is an Ikea bin!) in the bac and had a filter on the hose going from the bac to the pump but, no, there weren't any pips. Just lovely, deep coloured, fragrant fermenting juice.


The wine is now macerating on its skins. The cap of skins is still at the top and I do a daily pumpover to keep the cap moist and aid gentle extraction. Then the lid is put back on the tank to keep those pesky fruit flies away.

The grapes have gradually broken up during vinification and more pips are in evidence. I taste the wine twice daily to check its evolution. The colour is v deep and there are nice cherry fruit flavours. Black cherry. Over the last few days the tannins have become more pronounced, the flavours have filled out mid palate and there is more length of flavour.

Not sure when we will press. With such a small volume I don't think that a really long post ferment maceration is appropriate. We'll just keep tasting and see.

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!

Harvest time at Château IBJ

After 20 years in the wine business (how time flies), 7 of which have been spent in the Languedoc, I couldn't resist any longer. Yes, we bought a vineyard. Since May this year we have been owners of a small but perfectly formed hectare of Syrah vines. 15 years old, and in a beautiful spot on the other side of the hill from our house in the Minervois village of Mailhac.

The vines came with a share in the local cave co-op so we sold some of the grapes there but kept back 3 rows for ourselves which we have vinified in the corner of the garage.

The bit for the co-op was harvested on the 9th September (hubby's birthday).



The grapes for us were harvested a week later on the 16th September.



Here is our neighbour and consultant winemaker, Didier.


The grapes were destemmed


And then poured from the bins into a 1000 litre tank. They just fit!


More on the vinification in the next post.

Ch Ollieux Romanis Cuvée Prestige Corbières 2009

A quick post to share thoughts on one of the best white wines I've come across recently. It is a Corbières blanc from Chateau Ollieux Romanis. I've often enjoyed their more easy drinking, 'basic' Corbières blanc but this is only the second time I've tried the top white, the cuvée Prestige. I didn't write tasting notes at the time so the impressions below are from memory.

Made from 50% Roussanne and 50% Marsanne, this had some skin contact before being fermented and aged in new oak for 12 months. The oak is evident on the nose, but there is also notes of almond blossom and peach so the oak doesn't dominate. The palate is smoothly rich and satisfying with creamy oak balancing well with the fruit. Overall impression is of an extremely well balanced wine with excellent mid palate richness, good acidity, excellent length. The palate profile is similar to that of a good white Burgundy. At 15,50€ it is expensive for a Languedoc wine but not if you consider it is better than many village level white Burgundies.

The tasting notes from the property recommend drinking it with foie gras, roasted scallops or cheese. Sounds good to me.

I am ashamed to say that I have never visited this property although I've enjoyed the wines and frequently recommended them. So a visit there is now one of the more fun things on the 'to do' list.

Early flowering means early 2011 harvest

The continuing warm spring has promoted rapid vine growth. Some vineyards in the Minervois near Argeliers were in full flower over a week ago which growers predict will mean harvesting by the end of July, some 3 weeks earlier than normal. So that could mean that the first primeur bottlings are available in September.

The above photo shows the beginning of floraison in a Syrah vineyard. The flowers themselves are not showy, but they are surprisingly fragrant. Someone asked me last week if this was so as to attract insects for pollination. The odour may attract insects but they are not necessary for pollination. Grapevines are hermaphrodite and so self pollinating.