Languedoc Wine

the wine season....


Raisins at 5 weeks

They start much smaller than a pinhead when you first see them on the vine. The vines are still putting on foliage when the first raisins appear. The vines start budding in late March or early April. The fruits start appearing in May. This area, Languedoc-Roussillon, is the largest winegrowing region in the world. More production than Bordeaux, South Africa, Chile and Australia combined. And since 2001, more production than all of America. The total production is over 2 billion bottles per year. The first vines in France were planted by the Greeks probably north of Agde or Narbonne. It was 500 years B.C. A long time before the Romans, although the Romans dramatically improved the wine making process.



Pruning demonstrated

Most of the vigneron’s work is done long before you see any fruit. As early as December, the vigneron is busy trimming the vines and getting them in shape for a new crop. This consists of hand pruning all the old foliage off and selecting a few stems with perfect buds to start the next crop. The work is painstaking and slow and takes until mid March to complete all the vines. When complete, the vines look naked and stripped down to nothing but it is absolutely necessary. Big producers may have hired help, but most prefer this critical step to be done carefully so they do it themselves. In years past, because of the winter cold, small rock houses called mazets, dotted the vineyards and the clippers would warm up, eat, and rest a bit. Most of these mazets are gone now but you still can see quite a few.

In early spring and throughout the summer, the vigneron apply fertilizer and various insecticides to aid production. Any sight of blight is caught quickly and dealt with. Many plant rose bushes at each end of the vines for the purpose of catching blight early. Seems they found out that roses attracted the blight much sooner than the vines so if the roses get affected, there is still time for corrective action. The phylloxera louse in the 19th century severely affected the Languedoc wine industry, killing off many of the higher quality vines that were susceptible to the louse. American rootstocks that were naturally resistant to phylloxera were imported and solved this problem. Most rootstocks came from California and any variety can be grafted to the rootstock so you have French varieties growing on American roots.

The vines are also pruned through the summer. Partly to eliminate unnecessary growth to concentrate all the growth toward the raisins but also to prepare the vines for the pickers that will come at harvest. Some pruning is done with mechanical machines that resemble hedge shears but quite a lot is still done by hand. The vines are also plowed frequently to keep weeds from sapping the scarce moisture. It is curious that we always have heard about the benefits of good sunlight for the vines but in reality the raisins are fairly kept in the shade by the leafy vines.



Just turning colors

The raisins grow and mature right up to harvest. About the end of July, the colors begin to change. First with one raisin in a cluster and tomorrow there are three and the next 9 and so on. They start as a reddish purple (the reds) and darken right up til the vendange. The whites turn more opaque at first before developing a soft golden color near the harvest. In early August, they begin to look ripe so I decided to give it a taste test. Oops! Still not ready. Then about mid August they are developing the true sweetness that will shape the wine. Very tasty. At nearly the same time, the pulp inside has all but vanished. Almost pure juice inside the skin. When you try to pick one raisin off a cluster, it will likely squash between your fingers leaving nothing but juice. It seemed better to take a whole cluster and eat it like corn on the cob or watermelon. Later in August, the reds lose some of their sweetness and pick up some acidity. The vignerons monitor this condition and determine when to start the vendange. It is also this balance that determines the alcohol content.

The vendange started this year on August 20. The pickers were in the vines early and the cave cooperative opened at 3AM. The harvest will continue until a date certain established by the coop when all coop wine must be in. This again goes back to the conditions of sugars and acidity standards that must be adhered to. The cooperative receives, processes and handles the vinification of most of the wine from the region. Each grower contributes his harvest and receives the market price for his crop. If the wines are particularly good and a larger profit is made, he will also share in those proceeds. There are still many independent Domaines in operation. They produce their own wines under their own label and are not subject to the controls established by the cooperatives.  Domaines can pick early or late and get a totally different combination of sugar/acid than that of the cooperative. For example, Domaine Monplezy picks a Grenache crop late in October which is almost pure sugar and makes a beautiful port-like wine.



Harvester for raisins

Most picking nowadays is by machine. These huge devices manage to extract only the raisin and leave the vine in unruffled condition. In short… A grape harvester is a tall machine that straddles the trellis and uses special fingers (or rods) to shake the grapes off the vine. After the grapes have been shaken off the vine, the fruit lands on a catching tray, is collected by conveyor cups, and then transported to a reservoir that sits high at the rear of the machine. They are then transferred to the vendange wagons and hustled down to the cooperative or Domaine. These wagons work at their top speeds back and forth to get the most done in the shortest time. 

clusters after the picking

 

 

le queue at the cooperative



The schedule at the cave
 

The fermentation process begins when the raisins leave the vine. The fermentation process needs to be done in a controlled temperature environment so the heat of August becomes a problem. So much so that all the whites are picked at night and hustled in by 10 AM. The reds are a little less sensitive to the heat but still are picked and deposited as early in the day as possible.



sauvignon blanc to be

The whites are picked first with the Sauvignon Blanc, Muscat blanc, Viognier and Chardonnays in the first week. This is about 15% of the crop as the reds dominate in this region. Each grower has his time slot for delivery to the cave but there is always a queue early.



Mourvedre for softening the gamey varieties

The reds (rouge) is about 10 days later apparently needing the extra time on the vine and allowing the whites to clear the way. Typical here are Grenache, Syrah, Cinsault, Carignan and Mourvdre. There is some Merlot grown but very little Cabernet Sauvignon. These latter vines are grown in great quantities in Bordeaux. Our wines are shipped to Bordeaux by tankers for mixing with the Merlots, etc to make them more drinkable. Bordeaux wines can contain up to 25% of wines from other regions and frequently do.

Stems, leaves and trash



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The raisins are unceremoniously dumped in a large vat and cleaned of leaves, stems and other debris and the grower is paid on the net weight. The stems and trash is captured in a trailer and hauled back to someone’s vacant land and dumped. Later in the process, after pressing, and at the right interval, (when sufficient color is achieved) the skins and seeds meet the same fate. Certain Biodynamic vignerons are collecting skins and stems and returning it to the soil. Biodynamic means there are no commercial fertilizers, insecticides or mechanized equipment used in the production. Horses and ploughs are use to turn the soil.

 

 

Tending 120 year old vines Biodynamically
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pressing seems a bit of a misnomer. The raisins are so soft and liquid that they almost crush themselves in the trailers and holding vats. . By the time they bounce down the road in the trailer, gravity has done a lot of pressing already. The trailers leak grape juice on the roads to the point that Pezenas had put slippery when wet warnings on all the roundabouts. In fact, one domaine we visited doesn’t crush for a particular wine using the gravity approach which extracts a high percentage of the juice.



Busy season

Most of the vineyards (vignoble) are very small, probably between 5 and 20 hectares. Their size probably goes back to the days before cooperatives and mechanical pickers. Everything was a family operation and there were limits on how much could be worked as well as the capacity of the family’s cuvees and winemaking equipment. Our entire village seems to be vignerons. Even the mayor. But they are mostly small individual operators, not folks with large properties, staff or facilities. They are also an aging population and I wonder about the next generation of vigneron.



The mayor and his picker