Bottling Cuvée Séléné

We have now bottled our 2012 reserve white - to be released

We have now bottled our reserve white wine from 2012, and have a limited edition of just over 1000 bottles.

The wine was made from the same mix of juices as the award winning 2012 Tradition blanc, 90% Grenache blanc, 5% Clairette and 5% Ugni blanc (very old vines). 45% of this wine was fermented in new French oak and then aged in barrel. The barrel aged wine was then blended with juice which had been fermented in stainless steel. In contrast to the Tradition blanc which is 5% barrel wine, 95% stainless, this reserve wine is very different from classic southern Rhône whites. At a recent blind tasting of local wine-makers, their reaction was that it was an unusual and exciting wine.

We have called the wine Cuvée Séléné after the ancient Greeks’ moon goddess Selena and dedicated it to all the women who have ridden up Mont Ventoux. Although it is now bottled, we don’t expect release it until the first half of next year as we think it will bottle-age well and we want it to develop in the bottle prior to release.

For the wine anoraks, the bottling was not done in the normal way with a mobile bottling truck. We made use of our neighbour Even Bakke’s small bottling line. James took the wine up to Clos de Trias, Even’s domaine, in our pick-up truck and was lucky enough to have the help of Even’s Nordic horde of pickers to assist with the flow of bottles. Here are some photos:

Here is the wine going up to Trias in the pick-up and being bottled with Norwegian help.

For the real anorak, the barrels are of Allier and Vosges oak, medium toasted, 228 litre barriques made by Remond of Burgundy. And other than a very light filter as a polish, the wine has not been filtered.

The Vosges barrel during ferment. Beer bottle allows slow release of carbon dioxide through bung-hole!