Technical support
Appelations : AOC Minervois, AOC Minervois La Livinière, Vin de Pays des Côtes-du-Brian
Production area : 14 hectares
Production : approximately 60.000 bottles
Yields : average to low (40-45 hl/ha)
Climate : typically mediterranean, semi-arid with mild winters
Annual rainfall : very low 500 mm/year
Active temperatues sums on the vine : 1550°C to 1700°C
Topography : vines in terraces with a full southern exposure
Soil types : clay limestone siliceous sandstones
Grape varieties : Red : Mourvèdre, Picoul Noir, Syrah, Cinsault, Carignan, Grenache Noir, Pinot Noir fin
White : Grenache
Average age of vines : 20 to 50 years
Cultivation methods : - short pruning on all grape varieties
- some of the vines are trained in "open lyre"
- large foliar surface due to the specially adapted heights of the training wires
- no maintenance fertilizing is done during the year
- Commonly employed phytosanitary protection methods
- systematic leaf-thinning by hand
Vinifications : - hand picking with small containers
- complete destemming and exceptionnally long vatting times

Vinifications
Each of our cuvée, through their personnalities, express spontaneously and simply, the only truth which we think counts in viticulture :
The expression of the grape on its terroir

Besides this truth, the more we ourselves progress in the winemaking field, the more we think that today's essentials for producing great cuvées such as,"hyper technology" cellar equipement and the so-called genius and inspirations of winemakers, are literature for the naive. Not only don't believe in the cult of the "star-winemaker" which can make a winemaker into a "super-star", but also, we agree with Paul Pontallier of Chateau Margaux, that : "the great winemakers are those who know how to hide modestly behind their terroirs in order to serve them better".
With this mind, we arrived at Centeilles; our only concerns were the following ones :
1 - Harvesting grapes as "roasted" as possible
2 - Carrying hand-picked grapes in small cases so that they are not crushed
3 - Destemming the grapes completely to avoid the extraction of slightly rough tannins
4 - Punching the cap of grape skins
5 - Using very long fermentations between three and six weeks
Thanks to these vinifications which rely on a harmonius combination of grape variety, terroir and adapted technologies, we can obtain wines capable of aging for more than ten years without going through the stage of "austerity" which, sometimes, make complex wines somewhat unattractive in their first years.
There is only one exception to this general rule : exclusively harvested in small boxes, our old carignan grapes are vinified by true carbonic maceration, in other words without sulphiting of yeast addition, but with a continued bleeding of the free-run juices. Contrary to the wines made by destemming and crushing, the vatting time is here very short (about a week), in order to develop fruit a certain finesse of the tannins.