These are the wines that are created at Chateau La Fleur Morange. It is really cute, the Mathilde is named after Julien's daughter. He said the wine is much like his daughter, young and sweet.
Some things I learned about wine...(the good, the exceptional and the ugly)
1. Drinking wine straight out of the barrel gives me a serious headache. The grapes are too ripe. Must drink wine from a bottle, got it!
2. It costs 700 Euro for ONE grape/wine barrel, which translates to about $940 USD. From that one barrel, you get about 600 bottles of wine.
3. To properly pick the wine grapes, you pull all grapes from the vine, EXCEPT the one closest to the leaf....when the time is right, you pick only the grapes closest to the leaves and that is the crop that you will work with. The juice of the grape, the skin and the meat all must be the right color to make the wine taste good.
4. Once the grapes are chosen and picked, they are put into large silver containers, that I couldn't translate the name of, kept at a specific temperature. The grapes will sink and the juice will rise in this container. Once this happens, the juice (wine) is moved into the aforementioned barrels, where the wine will ferment for 18 months. (The wine I tasted out of the barrel that caused my head to throb was only about 7 months old).
5. The older the grapes are when you pick them, the longer the wine can sit in a bottle and the better it becomes, for example....the wine that we tasted was from 100 year old grape vines. So, essentially, their wines could sit on a shelf in a bottle, unopened for up to 20 years and taste better with age. A younger grape would not last very long in a bottle, shelf life is much shorter and will sour as time progresses.
6. Some wine vineyards will use cheap barrels and throw a piece of wood into the wine as it ages to give it that "aged to perfection" taste, but Julien told us that the reason that many people get headaches (like myself) is because of this method. Your wine is supposed to age in a barrel, which is where the wine gets the oak undertone from, so, vineyards will cheat to get the same flavor quickly and turn their wines around faster....however, Julien says that in the end, it is not a good product. Wine is not supposed to happen quickly, it is supposed to take a while and that is what will make a wine's flavor exquisite.
7. Julien is the owner of the vineyard, Chateau La Fleur Morange Julien gave us a private tour of his winery. He was both entertaining and informative. He said that when he first began making wine about 10 years ago, he was very proud of his first batch of wine, so he tasted it from the barrel (too early, he said) and discovered that he would be named "Chef Vinegar". Ha. He said that he had to ask himself, what have I done? I have bought this vineyard, so I will make vinegar?
Saint Emilion is the top choice for locals and the French for wines. Everywhere we visited in France, we would say that we were going to Bordeaux to see the wine country and people would tell us that we must see Saint Emilion. In the US, 10 wines from Saint Emilion were listed in top wine magazines for being some of the top wines of 2010.
On a side note, many of the "vinters" (winemakers) or "viticulturist" put rose bushes at the end of their rows of vines. They say if there are bugs in the roses, there are bugs in the grapes. Interesting approach and the brilliant roses at the end of each row of crisp green leaves and grapes offers a beautiful contrasting landscape.
No comments:
Post a Comment