A rare wine

When necessary during the harvest, the harvesters make a first selection of grape bunches that are at their optimum quality. When picking white varieties, the criterion is the golden colour of the bunches. A parcel is often harvested in two or three successive phases from a few days to a whole week apart.
White grapes are picked in the morning before the outside temperature is too high. Picking grapes at low temperature plays an important role in preserving their flavour, preventing oxidation from occurring, and guaranteeing the true expression of the soil.
Harvesting conditions are ideal when the weather is good: clear sky (no rain, brightness), average temperatures (18-23 ° C), and when the plots come to optimum maturity gradually over time.
All our grapes are handpicked and placed in small crates, in order to avoid compression, premature release of juice or uncontrolled extraction.

Making Great White Wines

As soon as they arrive in the vat-house, the grapes are hand-sorted again one by one, then the crates are emptied by hand into the pneumatic press. Pressing is done with a gradual increase in pressure and without breaking up the press cake to extract only the purest juice. The musts thus obtained are directly placed in barrels by gravity without pumping.
Alcoholic fermentation is carried out entirely in French oak barrels. Once complete, there comes the moment for the “bâtonnage” process, when an exchange takes place between the resuspended lees and the wine, thus promoting the development of its substance and aromatic expression.
The proportion of new oak barrels varies between 70 and 100% depending on the vintage. Although this proportion may seem high, it allows the best possible complementarity between the expression of each of the three grape varieties and the balance with the aromatic contribution of the barrels and the “bâtonnage” process.
Similarly, the relative proportions of each of the three grape varieties used in the blend may slightly vary. Both the aromatic and tasting expression of each variety can be significantly different from one vintage to another, so every time the blender has to find the right balance that achieves the best harmony in taste and the best potential for aging in bottles.
This is also why vinification never exceeds twelve months. Longer vinification could lead to an overpowering presence of wood aromas and could dry out the wines.
Keeping the barrels at very low temperatures for a month leads to natural clarification of the wine and allows for a bottling process without any chemical or physical treatment.

Making Great Red Wines

Using small vats allows for separate vinification of the grapes originating from different plots on the property. It is essential not to have to blend the grapes originating from different plots at an early stage, as this would hamper the diversity of the varieties and their expression, which are the basis of the work done to define the blend of each vintage’s Great Wine.
All the work done in the vineyard aims at placing the grapes in the best possible conditions to reach optimum maturity year after year. However, once harvested, the grapes have to be handled with the greatest possible care, in order not to spoil any of the potential they have painstakingly accumulated during ripening.
Separating the berries from their stems is done entirely by hand. Each grape is detached manually, one after the other. We prefer grape-by-grape destemming as opposed to general manual destemming. Many workers are required for this task (one person destems an average of 12 kg of grapes per hour), but it is the only way to put only whole grapes in the vats. That is, grapes that have not undergone any unintentional extraction or early release of juice (which could occur with pumping, mechanical destemmers, pressing, carpet lifts, and mechanised transfer equipment).
Just as any form of aggression of the grape is strictly ruled out, Château Pape Clement’s Great Wine is vinified in oak vats. Wood is a material which, thanks to its thermal characteristics, allows fermentation to take place in a much more homogeneous and regular way, without the brusque temperature fluctuations that are typical of steel vats.
Temperatures reach 29-30 ° C during fermentation, and are maintained between 27 and 29 ° C for post-fermentation maceration until draining. High temperatures are excluded so that the tannins and colour are extracted as smoothly as possible.
According to the vats and the vintages, fermentation lasts between 20 and 35 days. The draining date varies from one vat to another, depending essentially on tasting criteria.
Free-run wines are casked into barrels by gravity without pumping to achieve malolactic fermentation. Vinification in oak barrels for an average of 18 to 20 months provides natural clarification and harmonisation of the polyphenolic structure of the wines. The barrels originate from eight different cooperages, since the aroma resulting from vinification must be as fine and discreet as possible.