Château Gilette: Wines
On the Gilette vineyard the ultimate yield is never more than 10 hl/ha, and Xavier aims for 20.5º at harvest, which translates into 14% alcohol and 100-100 g/l residual sugar in the finished wine. The work on Les Justices is more “classic” according to Xavier, and the yields are a little higher at an average of 15 hl/ha. Naturally the fruit is picked in tries, and once arrived in the cellars it undergoes a pneumatic pressing at a very cold temperature, at about 4ºC, followed by a long débourbage, lasting perhaps two days. The aim is to delay the start of fermentation until the wine goes into stainless steel vats, where the temperature is allowed to rise to 17ºC. The subsequent fermentation can be very lengthy process, starting after harvest, but it may not finish until somewhere between March and July the following year.
After fermentation Les Justices sees twelve months in concrete and is then bottled, while Gilette goes into concrete for much longer, more detail on which below. Clearly, as described in my history of the estate, this began because of mere financial pressures, but Xavier is keen to extol the virtues of a pure concrete élevage over wood. “Wine is made in the vineyard, and during the harvest” says Xavier “and the best wines don’t need barrels to help them. In Sauternes it is not the cellar master and his barrels who make the wine, it is the picker. It is he or she who decides when the action of the botrytis is finally called to a halt”.
