Yannick Amirault: Wines
Speaking first of all exclusively about the domaine’s Cabernet Franc, the yields at harvest are between 40 and 45 hl/ha on average, but on certain parcels may be just 25 hl/ha. This is achieved in part by pruning, in part by a green harvest carried out in July or August. Most importantly the harvest itself, often delayed until October, is manual, with fruit selected using several tries. The bunches are picked into small baskets which are then transferred into hods, and then into a trailer (as pictured) which follows the pickers around the vineyard until the vines have been fully stripped. Once this has been achieved, the trailer is taken down to the cellars at La Coudraye.
The fruit is sorted as it comes off the trailer, after which it goes through a mechanical destemmer, before the freshly liberated berries are pumped through to the fermentation vessels (as pictured). These are generally in tronconic wooden cuves, vinification in wood something Yannick has favoured since in 1989. Having said that, as I have already suggested in my introduction to this profile, in recent years Benoît has also been experimenting with vinification in amphorae, and some wines are vinified in barrels (as pictured further down the page). All the fermentations are effected by indigenous yeasts, and have been since 1990.
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