The winemaking

"The keys to the quality of our white wines - skin maceration, pressing with inert gas, cold settling and low-temperature fermentation."

Elisabeth Prataviera, Domaine de Ménard

Skin maceration

Our grapes are harvested in the cool of night, in order to maintain their aromas and avoid over-oxidation, which would colour the juice.

The first stage is a long period of skin maceration. This technique consists in letting ripe, healthy berries soak in the cold for a few hours (the berries are de-stemmed to facilitate the exchange between the juice and the skin). This helps obtain fruitier wines with a more pronounced profile.

Extraction of the juice

The juice is extracted with a maximum of care by crushing, draining and pressing. During each of these stages, it is necessary to avoid any excessive contact between the juice and the oxygen so as to avoid oxidation. For this reason, we have acquired an Inertys press to carry out our pressings using inert gas.

"The making of a quality wine is a succession of stages of which pressing is one of the most decisive and one of the most difficult to manage. Pressing needs to be precisely adapted to every variety and every vintage. We decided to press our grapes with nitrogen to preserve the fruity aromas, avoid discolouring the juices and gain in aromatic freshness."

Elisabeth Prataviera, Domaine de Ménard

Cold settling

Cold settling is carried out overnight, to separate the juice from the must deposits (fragments of skin, stalks).

Fermentation

The juice is then put into tanks to ferment. It is during this period that juice starts to become wine, as the yeast transforms the sugar into alcohol.

Fermentation is carried out slowly in temperature controlled tanks.