Our wines are what happens when a passionate family meets a rich and generous terroir. Then there is a team effort that combines know-how and an open-minded attitude to bring you highly individual “vins d’auteur“, always with the same aim: to give you pleasure and a special thrill! We practise ecological viticulture by conviction, and synthetic products, herbicides and insecticides have no place in it. We are not following a fashion, it is simply self-evident to us, a personal intuition that it is the best way. Benefiting from ISO 14001 (SME Bordeaux) certification, HEV 3 (High Environnemental Value), what we want to reduce our environmental impact to the very minimum: to protect our soil, our landscape, our groundwater, our biodiversity – and people. This commitment is strengthened by a transition to AB, to formalize our practice begun more than 10 years ago.
We use rational low-input techniques when working the soil in order to respect its structure. The addition of organic fertilisers, such as manure and compost, coupled with planting legumes and cereals, encourages natural biological activity in the soil. This ecosystem is the basis of a living, healthy soil, our soil. Throughout the vegetation cycle, after observation and analysis, foliar preparations (trace elements, plant extracts, silica…) are applied in “homoeopathic” doses to maintain the nutritional balance of the plant, stimulate its natural defences and increase its immunity accordingly. This enables us to minimise phytosanitary inputs, however natural they may be, copper for example… This ecological approach (begun in 1997 and accentuated since 2008) requires rigour and precision; it reduces yields, but rewards us year after year with grapes with a genuine identity that are characteristic of their terroir.
The “gardening” job we do enables us to vinify with minimal intervention, as naturally as possible, with no need for biotechnology or tricks of the trade. What counts here is a rigorous approach every step of the way: hygiene and a well-kept cellar all year round are indispensable to ensure consistent quality and expression in our wines. Native yeast and a very limited amount of sulphites, used wisely and appropriately (30 to 50ml/L of total SO2, or just half the quantity authorised for organic wines) allow our wines to reveal all the typical character of the terroir. It is not a question of doing nothing, but of gently guiding them as and when necessary so that they live up to their potential: pure, precise, expressive wines of consistent quality and, above all, that we would like to drink!
After more than a year maturing in tanks and/or barrels, we age our wines in the bottle for 5 to 7 years depending on the cuvée, so that they go on sale when they are their very best… A grape grown on a healthy vine in living soil, vinified with respect bodes well for a sincere, expressive wine…In the interests of transparency and if they are to be fully appreciated, our wines need to meet people. We therefore take the time to present them ourselves, at the Château and at various wine fairs, but above all you can meet them at our ‘Partners’ in ideal surroundings (no cold, soulless shelves…): at wine merchants, in wine bars and restaurants, all of whom are aware of the work that goes into making the wines and who are as passionate as we are about authentic, well-made wines. They will be able to tell you the story of our wines and, we feel sure, put across our deep convictions.
No doubt about it, our wines are the fruit of the commitment of our family, the Todeschinis. But however deep our convictions, which require hard, precise work in the vineyards, we cannot do it alone. It is thanks to our staff, who share the same vision of the winegrower’s job, that we are able to rise to the challenge. Our team is mainly young, always dynamic and willing to put time and all their energy into making our wines, at every stage from pruning the vines through to vinification. So we would like to say a big thank you to Dominique, Julien, Benoit, Dimitri, Jordan, Antoine, Kévin, Alexandre, Simon and Axel for their commitment and the passion they put into their work at our side every day.