The 2009 Vintage at Chateau d’Esclans, from the vines to the cellars...

Chateau d’Esclans’ harvest took place this year with winning ingredients including a benevolent eye cast upon it by our proprietor, Sacha Alexis Lichine, the Vineyard’s Foreman and Technician, Franck Fantino and Cellar Master or Maitre de Chais, Jean-Claude Neu. The Chateau’s Consulting Oenologist, Patrick Leon was on hand as well. Patrick’s involvement is key in relation to our quest to aspire to excellence at Chateau d’Esclans. His vast experience in making wine at Mouton Rothschild in Pauillac, Opus One in California and Almaviva in Chile go a long way towards ensuring this.

Essential to this celebrated team of professionals, are scores of harvesters who, under Franck’s direction, worked with selecting grapes from the different parcels of vines at Chateau d’Esclans. Additionally, Jean Claude’s team in the cellar, who subsequently received and sorted the grapes grape by grape, play an equally important role.

Expert direction and dedicated execution were made possible by good weather conditions offering many days of blue skies, the happiness of the Mistral and the maritime entries arriving every afternoon to dry both the vines and grapes.

Leading into this successful Harvest was a year round process of attentiveness overseen by Franck including a broad range of processes to make sure that the best grapes are grown.

This coupled with a continual investment in the vineyards (vine renovation) and the cellar (state of the art equipment) guarantees outstanding quality control. A critical element to this has been a recently installed pneumatic wine press ensuring no oxidation.

The result to this is to producing Chateau d’Esclans’ free run juice which is essential to give our wine both minerality and elegance. Additionally, this gives way to the coveted pale color that makes Rose pleasing to the eye. Part to the process is the prioritizing the juice which goes into making the range of Chateau d’Esclans’ four award winning cuvees: Whispering Angel, Chateau d’Esclans Esclans, Les Clans & Garrus.

Vinification for each cuvee includes stainless steel for Whispering Angel, a significant proportion of oak for Chateau d’Esclans, while our most exclusive cuvees, Les Clans and Garrus, are completely vinified in 600 liter demi muid oak barrels from the Taransaud cooperage. These barrels have a very fine grain, a medium toast and other specific technical characteristics.

The precise nature of the oak vinification process gets an important boost from a high end temperature system which monitors and controls the temperature of the fermentations for each barrel. This is a key innovation at Chateau d’Esclans giving its roses incomparable balance. Towards that end, the freshness of the fruit is consistently maintained throughout the fermentation process.

That process includes employing the batonage or stirring from the bottom of the barrels twice a week during the vinification process. The result is obtaining depth, complexity and length that many impressed consumers experience when they have Chateau d’Esclans’ oak vinified Rose.

To date, the fermentations are taking place smoothly and Jean-Claude foresees the juices being easy to work with, followed by simple fermentations to be followed by making the 2009 vintage “amazingly fresh without stress."

Equal enthusiasm is palatable for Deesse, Chateau d’Esclans’ red wine cuvee which will be kept in new barrels for nine months. The Chateau is producing more red wine and we look forward to presenting an impressive vintage.

With the wine now in the tranquility of the Château d’Esclans’ cellars we expect exciting results in the New Year!