Champalou: Wines
Once picked the fruit is delivered to the Champalou cellars, where the juice is extracted using two pneumatic presses they have installed. Thereafter the juice is fermented in stainless steel for the majority of the harvest, with the temperature regulated to 17ºC. Some cuvées are fermented in barrel though, previously 450-litre barrels, but from 2009 onwards they have switched to 500-litre barrels no doubt to reduce the influence of the wood on the wine a little.
The Champalou family have an interesting philosophy when it comes to oak; they buy all their barrels new, and use them from new until they are retired, not necessarily because they enjoy the aromas and flavours associated with oak, but because they believe the first wine ever to go into a barrel marks that wood in an irrevocable fashion, no doubt having some tangible effect on future vintages to go into the same vessel. For that reason, the Champalou family will never buy old barrels; they can’t abide the thought of fermenting and aging wine in a barrel that started out life full of someone else’s wine.
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