Dear friends,
We’re fast heading for winter, but the work never stops here on our biodynamic wine farm. In addition to tending to our animals, we’re preparing the land for spring and building some exciting new partnerships.
I’ll tell you more about our plans next month, but in the meantime, please enjoy an update on our wines (an excellent 2022 vintage!), some news from our meadows and an introduction to one of our cheese shop partners in Paris.
You can also see Andreas Larsson, Best Sommelier of the World 2007, tasting Château Mamin 2020. It's the perfect season to savor a glass of warming red Bordeaux!
All the best,
Vincent.
“Let food be thy medicine” – Hippocrates
The surprise star of 2022: merlot
There’s been talk about global warming pushing merlot, an early-ripening grape variety, to the brink of extinction in Bordeaux. However, our vines did well this year, producing small but exceptional quality grapes. Despite the drought and the risk of overmaturation, we harvested our merlot quite late in the season to obtain perfectly mature tannins for our biodynamic Château Mamin wine (60% merlot, 30% cabernet sauvignon and 10% petit verdot).
The result is a powerful, fragrant and fresh vintage with an acceptable sugar content (240 g/L or 13.5% alcohol).
Château de Lardiley 2022: elegant and complex
Taste and pleasure guide our work throughout the winegrowing and vinification process. For this latest harvest, we’ve produced 20% of our biodynamic white wine in French oak barrels. The original idea was to create two distinct wines, but the blend of vat- and barrel-matured grapes has resulted in an elegant, complex wine.
A powerful citrus nose (lemon, grapefruit and litchi) is complemented by a smooth feel and a crisp end note.
Try our latest vintage!
All our 2022 wines are no sulfites added and certified organic (AB and NOP) and biodynamic (Demeter). Please let me know if you’d like samples (available from January 2023).
The drought continues, but it’s not all bad news
During the last few weeks of September, the grass in our fields became thin on the ground and we had to feed our Landais sheep and Pyrenean donkeys with hay. But the rain at the start of October, combined with exceptionally high temperatures, has allowed the meadows to grow back. Our animals will now have enough to graze on throughout the winter. By the way, we’ve just welcomed our first three lambs of the fall!
La fromagerie des 5 : profession matchmaker !
Carole, the founder of the Fromagerie des 5 cheese shop in Paris, is the kind of client we love: a true ambassador of distinctive local products who’s passionate about “magical marriages” between cheese and wine.
She suggests Château de Lardiley with goat’s cheeses like Rigotte de Condrieu or Charolais, which have hazelnut and dried fruit notes that accentuate the wine’s exotic fruit aromas. For Carole, our lively sauvignon gris also complements a creamy Brie de Meaux. Meanwhile, Château Mamin’s elegant tannins and spicy notes reveal the pungent, fruity flavors of Ossau-Iraty or the dairy taste of Brocciu, a Corsican fresh cheese made from ewe’s milk. “But definitely not Camembert,” says this native Norman. “Penicillium camemberti burns the mouth with red wine. Best to go with a sauvignon blanc, champagne or cider.” You learn something new every day… Thanks, Carole!
Love it!
Here you can see Andreas Larsson, Best Sommelier of the World 2007, tasting our Château Mamin 2020. You may remember, Andreas recently ranked our organic red among his top three Graves wines in a blind tasting of around 200 samples earlier this year.