Bottling, bottling and a bit of bottling!!!

Once again an early start and the first bottling today is Chateau Camail 2009 way out in the Premières Côtes de Bordeaux region near Sauternes. This is another great little find, heaps of cassis and the palate is so smooth with lovely rounded tannins, ready to drink now!


Next stop is Saint-Emilion and Chateau De Lisse. The Todeschini brothers own this place and they are waiting for me to give the green light to start bottling. The mobile bottling plant and bottles, corks, labels and boxes are ready to go and I taste the wine after the filter and make the important ‘cut’ (when the wine tastes perfect) and away we go, minutes later the first bottle is my hand! This is classy stuff and my advice is to reserve some asap.

Back in the Chai car and off to Montravel just near the Chai to do the ‘taste off cut’ for the long waited ‘Part du Boucher’ wine, minutes later the first bottle is again in my hand! The label is fantastic but I find it hilarious that although JMS isn’t here his face is everywhere you look! Jose from barrel company Remond gave me a call for lunch so I took JMS with me! Our local restaurant and general hub of activity ‘Le Voyageur’ loved the label and JMS is now firmly on the shelf with the Chefs prized ‘boules’ trophies!

Back to the Chai and Petit Denis is extremely pleased as the new barrels have arrived and he gets busy squirreling them away into the Dordogne Chai.

Libby and I are invited to a house warming party at the Todeschini’s this evening and we can’t wait as they always make a brilliant night with superb food and if we’re lucky they might pull out some great wines from their secret cellar!

Bon soirée!

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Monday Mornings!

Not too far to drive this morning as I am transporting the 2010 Tertre Bel Air from the northern plateau of Castillon to the Chai. Great terroir here in this little lost corner ... lots of diverse slopes etc

Then it begins: phone rings, truck is lost (by about 35miles), quite a few Bel Air's around! Virtually every village in Bordeaux has a Bel Air! I finally find the truck and escort it to the chez Bruno.

Bruno is waiting ... a mountain of a man with a beret on. It's quite a narrow drive and these guys are not used to having their wine taken in bulk (normally bottle themselves and sell locally). Then the nightmare: as truck reverses the wheel comes off the drive. Stuck truck!! Papa Dellac to the rescue.

We taste the wine from a coffee cup - it's the wild west out here - then start pumping. These old tanks have to be pumped over the top - but like Bruno's chai, they've been used every year for the last 100 years.


I've worked with these vats before and everyone dreads to open the dreaded bottom hole to get the last out. Have to be quick as the wine gushes out!!!

Funny triangle taps, every vat has a different tap and special spanner along with a unique technique known only to Bruno!!!

Slowly by slowly I blend the components into the tanker as Bruno has no room here at his old Chai.

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Blending Grand Chai 2010

During the blending of the 2010 JMS Sauvignon yesterday I tasted every barrel of the Grand Chai Sauvignon and I decided it was ready to rack them to vat NOW and blend with the cool vat fermented Sauvignon to conserve the exact aromas and body of today. This will however be only one part of the final blend as the Semillon and Sauvignon Gris need a bit longer in barrel before they join the others for the final blend.

Big job ahead so we started at the crack of dawn this morning, Denis had his beloved cones straight out front of the Chai to slow down the speed crazy Friday commuters (the majority getting to work early in order to leave early for the ritual weekly long weekend!)

With Denis in charge of barrels and me taking care of the large vat transfer we were did a simultaneous racking. This meant whilst I was going through the bottom tap to conserve dissolve carbon dioxide (for freshness), Denis was busy racking the barrel wine whilst avoiding taking the 'gros lies’ (heavy sediment) over the top via the vat chimney with the end of the hose out of the surface of the wine to avoid air being bubbled into wine between barrel changing. The photo is not a newly discovered extraterrestrial world but how it looks inside the vats from a vat chimneys point of view!

The ‘gros lies’ have been kept in the barrel since ferment to give weight to the wine and are now no longer desirable where on the other hand the relatively clean wine (due to having been already racked a number of times) in vat had some very aromatic fine sediment (fine lees). Once I had reached the bottom of the vat it was time to open the door and inspect and most importantly taste and smell the gloopy sediment!

The ‘fine lees’ had settled perfectly with a layer of compact sediment sticking to the vat floor and on opening the door the fine runny lees poured off the top. The aroma and taste of the fine lees was incredible and was collected by dragging them out with the ‘lees scraper’ into a tub which I’ll put back into the blend to help the aroma before a further racking when the final finished blend will be made.

Denis however was rolling each empty barrel to collect the now no longer wanted thick lees as we must declare these to customs!