A few days before the harvest, we select several baskets of grapes to create the pied de cuve, a fermentation starter.
We create a pied de cuve for each geographical mention harvested.
Without this time-honoured technique, natural alcoholic fermentation would be left to chance, with numerous risks (such as the fermentation of certain yeasts that could create olfactory distortions).
The grapes are crushed. After a couple of days, the indigenous yeasts initiate fermentation and the must usually reaches full fermentation within a week.
Then we harvest the vineyard: the grapes are crushed and destemmed as quickly as possible to preserve the freshness and integrity of the fruit and are then gravity-fed into truncated oak vats.
The fully fermenting must of the pied de cuve is then added, either at the time of crushing or a few days afterwards, depending on the vintage.
