AUXERROIS Qvevri 2012 (Domaine Laurent Bannwarth)

The Auxerrois Qvevri is an "orange wine", that is to say a white wine vinified like a red one, with the grape skins. Its vinification in Qvevri is unique in France, using the Georgian vinification methods as they have been practiced for 6000 years in this country.

TERROIR

The Auxerrois grapes intended for the Qvevri vinification are selected when harvesting and according to their maturity. They come from the different estate plots, including the Bildstoeckle terroir.

Two types of terroir are exposed in the estate plots :

• The first terroir is made up of marly-limestone soil that formed at the end of the Eocene (-33 to -37 million years ago), when the Hercynian massif collapsed and gave birth to the Rhine basin. The region was then covered with lakes at that time and conducive to a varied lake sedimentation in which fine marls mingle with more clayey and sandstone marls, as well as conglomerates and pebbles.
• The second terroir is made up of a Loess soil, a light, porous yellow silt brought by the winds and that deposited during the last Quaternary glaciations, two million years ago.

WINEMAKING

The Auxerrois wine vinification is done entirely in Qvevris, these are large buried dolia with a capacity of approximately 1500 liters.

The harvested grapes quality will determine the choices of desteming or not and of macerating or not.

The berry tasting takes place in the vines, at the time of the harvest : the grapes with a perfect maturity associated with a nice sugar/acidity balance are selected for the Qvevris. For the maceration to be possible, the skins must not show any alteration.

Once harvested and sorted according to the aforementioned criteria, the grapes are destemmed by hand, gently pressed using a pneumatic press and the juice flows directly into the Qvevri. The marc formed by the pressed skins is then enclosed in a 1 meter high pocket which is added to the juice in the Qvevri. The alcoholic fermentation starts spontaneously under the native yeasts action, it lasts about ten days, then comes the malolactic fermentation carried out by the lactic acid bacteria. The must remains in contact with the skins for seven months, at the end of which the pockets containing the skins is removed, the wine racked and the lees removed from the Qvevri. The wine returned to this same cleaned Qvevri, topped with a young wine of the same quality, and the whole stays 3 extra months in the Qvevri. The wine is then racked and bottled without filtration, fining or sulphits addition.

The initially orange color darkens after 24 hours of opening under the oxygenation effect. This phenomenon is normal, there are natural wines. The residual sugar level is 0.8 g/l.

SERVICE ADVISE

Open the bottle 2 hours before serving and let the wine oxygenate for a few minutes in the glass.