Château Rouget

And what if this year, often disparaged, was finally preparing for us beautiful surprises by making Rouget 2013 exceptional?
Admittedly, Nature played us like a fiddle and complicated the task even more. During vegetative cycle, we fought against the elements, the diseases and vine's whims. At Rouget we rarely spent as much time to rebuild and restore what was demolished by rains, storms or winds. Never had we walked that much in vineyards, because the soils were too soft to enter with tractor. Our viticultural practices that combine biological and biodynamical principles and, most crucial in 2013, simple farmer's wisdom, contributed much to produce interesting grapes with great potential. We had to read the sky, to understand the reactions of the vine and to anticipate and suppress any disease at its very beginning.
Exhausted but happy about our work between April and September, we started harvesting our young Merlot in early October. Not a single time the health of vineyards has determined our agenda. We reasonably expect the optimal maturity that this vintage may offer. Certainly, the structure of the berries is not at the level of famed 2009 or 2010, but we were far from the foretold disaster.
The core of our vinification approach was pragmatism and permanent monitoring. Short cuvaisons, slow fermentations with indigenous yeasts and soft extractions not to brutalise this fragile vintage.