The sweltering hot vintage. Nothing exceptional in Vingrau. The vines here are used to dealing with hydrous stress. Varieties and root-stock have been selected over the centuries for this purpose. Two ploughings, at the end of the winter and early spring, using a tracked-vehicle and a mule-drawn plough, where regular tractors couldn’t pass, helped discard superficial rooting. This obliges the roots to dig deeper into the rocks to find water and nutrients, and so reveal the true nature of the Terroir.
Ripening shut down briefly in September, but patience paid-off and everything gradually fell back into place. We brought in some magnificent Carignan, picked late as we harvested until October 23rd. The stunning freshness proved the benefit of blending at an early stage and aging the varietals together. Bottled, the wines don’t show any hints of «cooked» fruit we feared. We planted a new plot with 12,000 vines per hectare. Unfortunately, the soil was not prepared enough, and after two years of struggle, we had to pull one row out of two. Nature called us back to order and taught us a lesson of humility.