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Wine making
The harvest is done by hand with the greatest care what frequently brings to pick the grapes grain by grain for the realization of the liquorish wines. Many successive sorting are carried out as well to obtain a perfectly ripe vintage for the dry white wines (5 successive passages for Sauvignon in 1998) that to have a homogeneous botrytized vintage of perfect quality for Monbazillac. All harvest is reported to the wine storehouses in small containers (mainly food plastic small cages of 10 kilos) to avoid oxidations. For the white wines, the technique of supra-extraction is sometimes used in the wet millésime. It consists in freezing the whole grape then to press it at low temperature. This practice allows a better extraction of the flavours and richness of the grapes. Pressing is carried out in horizontal presses with a manual management of tightenings so that the main part of the juice comes from crushed grapes with low pressure. Must is immediately protected from oxidation by CO2. After a light washing, the fermentations carried out starting from indigenous yeasts start out of tank then continue out of barrels wines essentially (70% for “Bergerac Sec”, 100% for the “Monbazillac" in barrels. Every year, the new wine is put in new barrels of 225 L of oak of the middle of France. The aging with "bâtonnages" frequent, in first period, lasts approximately 11 months for “Bergerac Sec” and 22 to 36 months for the “Monbazillac aged in barrels”.
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