Calling in on Les Carmes, 2016: Whole Bunches
Inside these new cellars the approach to vinification is no less innovative than the design of the building might suggest. At harvest time fruit passes over a single sorting table of very distinctive design. On each side of the central conveyor belt there is a channel into which bunches with brown stems are placed. These bunches are then destined for whole-bunch fermentation; this is a practice they use mainly for Cabernet Franc, perhaps also on a little Merlot, but never on the Cabernet Sauvignon. Meanwhile, the bunches left on the central conveyor belt are destemmed as per the norm in most Bordeaux cellars, and then transferred to the vats. Guillaume Pouthier is not a fan of pre-fermentation crush, as he feels fermenting whole berries keeps the skins in the best condition possible, and also helps keep the tannins in the pips, which he deems of lower quality than the skin tannins (a widely held view), better hidden from the must. The fact that the consultant working with the château is Stéphane Derenoncourt, who favours whole-berry fermentation, may also be significant in the adoption of these processes.
Whole-bunch fermentation might bring many benefits (which – because it is more common with Pinot Noir or even Gamay than it is with Cabernet Franc, I have discussed in my guide to red winemaking in the Loire Valley), but here at Château Les Carmes Haut-Brion they cite the extra sense of minerality and saltiness that it brings to the wine before any other. They carry out whole bunch and single berry fermentations in the same vat, in layers, a very similar process to that undertaken by Fabien Teitgen at Château Smith-Haut-Lafitte. They work “softly”, as Guillaume puts it, with occasional pigeage and no pumping over unless absolutely necessary. Instead they prefer to submerge the cap with the help of an inflatable donut-shaped balloon, rather like the one Philippe Vatan also uses at Domaine du Hureau in Saumur-Champigny. Guillaume describes his approach as “more infusion than extraction, more like making tea than coffee”.
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