LES PIERRES SECHES 2021 (Yves CUILLERON)

DESCRIPTION

The wine name evokes the dry stone walls which are built to consolidate the vineyard terraces on the hillsides. LES PIERRES SÈCHES is a blend of Syrah plots planted on the northern Saint-Joseph designation hillsides.

TERROIR

LES PIERRES SÈCHES is an blend of plots scattered on the northern slopes of the designation, where the soils are made of crystalline rocks, sometimes granitic, sometimes anatectic, such as :

• the granite with biotite (black mica), and the granite with muscovite (white mica), two granitic rocks that formed 600 million years ago as a result of the slow magma cooling in the earth depth. These granitic rocks, very hard after their formation, cracked under the action of the plates tectonic movements and the water runoff that infiltrated them caused them to burst during winter freezing. It is through these multiple crevices that the vine penetrates the rock with its roots to recover water and nutrients.
• the dark anatectite with cordierites, a metamorphic rock resulting from the partial fusion of gneiss caused by the plates tectonic stress which locally causes a pressure and temperature increase.

These soils are mainly reserved for the Syrah variety which finds an ideal soil, poor in calcium and rich in silica, offering many water resources trapped in the cracks.

WINEGROWING & WINEMAKING

The grapes are vinified plot by plot. Their blending will only take place at the time of bottling.

The grapes are harvested manually, sorted, crushed and then partially destemmed. The alcoholic fermentation takes place in open vats, it starts spontaneously under the native yeasts action.

The maceration lasts 3 weeks, a period during which the marc cap is regularly immersed in the juice by punching down (the cap is pushed in with a piston) and by pumping over (the must is pumped at the tank bottom and is poured over the tank top on the marc cap).

The must is then racked in oak barrels where it carries out its malolactic fermentation during an ageing phase lasting approximately 18 months.

The bottle is sealed with a DIAM10® cork stopper which guarantees the absence of any TCA contamination or cork taste.

LES PIERRES SÈCHES is a wine with a cellar potential of at least ten years.