- Description
- A single barrel made with the help of our 'Worker Bees' - 16 Wine Club Members who came out for the weekend to harvest and tread the grapes (and then have a jolly good dinner).
This is 100% Grenache from our 65-year-old Bac de Genievres plot.
- Eyes
- A very bright cherry red
- Nose
- A punchy, vibrant nose, full of cherries, strawberry and kirsch, and accented with rosemary and fennel
- Mouth
- Big rich ripe fruit is at the core of this expressive and characterful red, showcasing old vine Grenache at its most exuberant. There's a really refreshing twist of pithy, peppery tannin from the whole bunch fermentation, and a rather wild, untamed feel that may need a year or two to settle down in the bottle.
- Body
- full
- Winemaking notes
- List of winemakers continued.... Penny, Peter, Phyllida, Richard, Samantha and Vicki (with a bit of help from Amanda and Justin, and the team at Chateau St Roch).
After the grapes were picked, we ferried them to the winery at Chateau St Roch in our car (and punctured a tire on the way, so had to unload all the grapes in order to change it!). Each picker in turn tipped a couple of boxes of whole bunches into an open barrel and then trod them with their (scrupulously cleaned) bare feet. The barrel was chilled for a few days to allow extraction of as much fruit and colour as possible, and then warmed up gently to ferment for 10 days with twice daily punchdowns. Ater pressing, the wine was aged in a single 3-year-old 225L barrel for 15 months.
- Growing Conditions
- After a very dry, but not especially cold winter, spring began early, and was extremely dry, until flowering season, which was damp and warm. The temperature soared in June, with a late June day topping out at 42 degrees, the rest of the summer was ideal - warm temperatures, an occasional rain to keep the vines healthy. This year harvest season was marked by two or three significant rainfall events, which made choosing the picking date a little complicated, but our Wine Club Weekend was planned for the 5th and 6th October, which dawned bright and breezy, so we picked the lower blocks of the Bac de Genievres on the 5th October in a couple of hours
