A white wine from Château de Pierreux

While Beaujolais traditionally celebrates the happy marriage between the Gamay grape and granite soil, other unions are being formed. One of these involves limestone and Chardonnay. Some promising land near the Château de Pierreux prompted the move to produce a white wine in this land of reds.

Three plots with fairly young, seven-year-old vines provided the golden grapes for this novel wine:

“Le Roux”: half a hectare, mainly granite soil with clay, harvested on 4 October.

“Le Savigny”: 0.7 hectares, principally limestone with some clay, harvested on 11 October.

“Le Gonnu”: 2.2 hectares chiefly on pink granite. This huge, magnificent plot facing east-southeast, was harvested in two goes; on 28 September for the earlier ripening areas, with the rest picked on 4 October. Two months later, while alcoholic fermentation has not yet finished, we can already see two taste profiles emerging around grapefruit and honey. 

After gentle pressing and cold settling, around a quarter of the harvest was vinified and aged in 450-liter new oak vats, the rest in stainless steel to preserve the fruit and citrus flavors.

A wine to be discovered next spring…

www.chateaudepierreux.com