SATELLITE ROUGE 2017 (Satellite Wines - Olivier TECHER)

Satellite is a negotiant wine, its vinification is carried out by Olivier Techer who is himself winemaker at château Gombaude-Guillot, in Pomerol.

TERROIR

The grapes of the 2017 vintage come from a wine estate located in Saint-Magne-de-Castillon, in Gironde. The soils are of clay-limestone type, made up of sands and carbonate clays called Molasses du Frondasais, which formed at the beginning of the Lower Oligocene, between -33 and -23 million years ago.

This period was marked by a massive extinction of species, a general cooling and the appearance of deciduous trees in the Western Europe. Libourne was there the site of an important sedimentation (late Eocene / early Oligocene), when the sea which was covering the region withdrew, favoring these very thick continental deposits called Molasses du Frondasais.

WINEMAKING

The plots are not sprayed with weedkiller, grass is controlled with a cereals and legumes sowing. The grapes, cultivated according to the principles of Organic Agriculture, are harvested mechanically.

The alcoholic fermentation lasts about three weeks and takes place in stainless steel tanks. The must is then aged for 14 months in oak barrels of one wine for 25% of the must, the rest is aged in stainless steel tanks.

The wine is fined with organic egg white and filtered.

SERVICE ADVISE

2017 is more structured than the previous vintages. The tannins require, in the first two years, one to two hours in the decanter before the service. During our tasting made in January 2020, we decanted the wine 1/2 hour beforehand. The wine had still a tight structure, but 24 hours later, the juice had softened and the tannins melted.