Chateau de Suronde

History …

Tasting the wine makes intimate or childhood memories resurface… they lean against the pages of a history book, go back in time until the Middle Ages – the time of the very first winegrowers, the monks at the origin of this Appellation. As rent for their land, they had to give the lords who owned the property “ the best quarter (“quarts” in french) of the grape harvest, from the vines on the southern slopes” This custom is still in effect today in the tiny area of Quarts de Chaume (only 40 ha).

 

Vineyards…

This Domaine knows no chemicals – no weed-killers, no insecticides,only regular plowing and exclusively two kinds of spraying: sulfer and bordeaux mixture. Over the months, work in the vineyards continues, from grape and leaf thinning to debudding. Then the sun, the wind and the humidity do the rest, ripening the grapes one by one, and developping noble rot and taste. Maturity and concentration quickly give the green light for the grape harvest – which is done by hand, in 2 to 5 successive passages or more, depending on the year and the weather. Grape by grape, crate by crate, the harvest is pressed in vertical presses. The juice is left hours and hours to slowly flow out of the press, expressing its heart and soul…

 

Winemaking …

We harvest barely 10 hectoliters per hectare (that’s just under one glass of wine per vineplant). The juice is immediately transferred from vats into barrels, in which it slowly bubbles and quivers day after day as it ferments. When the fermentation is in full swing, the cellars resound with its faint and steady rumbling sound. If you put your ear against one of the barrels, you can hear the bubbles bursting, sizzling, wild with the pleasure of the new life awakening within the liquid. The yeast begin their long journey (an odyssey which will last a year), hunting down sugar and transforming it into alcohol. The countdown has begun…