LA MONTAGNE 2014 (Saint-Jean du Barroux)

DESCRIPTION

Philippe GIMEL has some white vine varieties and he manages to produce a few bottles but the quantities are limited. For example, for the 2014 vintage of the cuvée La Montagne, the production was only 1995 bottles.

La Montagne is a blend of 3 white grape varieties : Grenache Blanc, Clairette, and Bourboulenc. The yields do not exceed 20 hl / ha, and the northern exposure of the vines makes it possible to obtain southern white wines of great freshness.

This white wine has a particularity : very open and fruity the first year after bottling, the latter tends to close during the following three to four years, before opening again at the end of its sixth year.

In order not to risk disappointing wine lovers, Philippe GIMEL prefers to keep the wines in his cellar for these six years and then taste them to make sure that he markets them after their austerity phase.

TERROIR

The estate terroir is very diversified, the plots being distributed between the villages of Malaucène and Le Barroux, on fairly recent soils predominantly dating from the Oligocene (-33 and -23 m.y) whose marls and limestones were formed by continental sedimentation in sub-tropical climate with dry seasons. Other plots rest on older thick soils of black schist marls dating from the Oxfordian (-161 to -155 m.y) whose sedimentation took place in deep water, the region being entirely submerged during this geological period. Finally, some plots rest on a very old base dating from the Triassic (-251 to -199 m.y) and showed on the surface by tectonic events that happened during the Eocene (-55 to -33 m.y).

WINEGROWING & WINEMAKING

The estate vineyards are cultivated according to the principle of Organic Agriculture with Ecocert certification. The grapes are picked manually, and the harvest is immediately pressed by vertical press. After fermentation, the must is aged in stainless steel tanks. The wine is filtered before bottling. The stopper used is a DIAM® type 10 cork stopper which protects the wine from TCA contamination (or "corky taste").