Having the courage to do "nothing"

Domaine la Garrigue argues that the quality of its wines derives from its vineyards and not the cellar. In my view they are only half correct. Having spent twelve months labouring in the vineyards trying to maximise the quality of the grapes it takes a lot of courage not to intervene in the cellar.

The domaine still uses two ancient wooden presses to extract wine from the wet skins after the juice has fermented. These old presses are said to produce the finest quality of press wine because the extracted wine filters through a bed of grape skins. Almost all other wineries have abandoned these old presses for pneumatic or Vaslin presses which are significantly more labour saving. The Vacqueyras red wines are then aged in concrete vats for at least 18 months. The long ageing period allows the wines to clarify naturally. La Garrigue does not filter its wines in order to preserve the wines’ natural flavours. They also eschew wood ageing as they believe it suppresses the flavours of terroir.

This 80 hectare domaine produces a large range of wonderful, complex, and balanced wines, principally from the Vacqueyras appellation. Dating back to mid-19th century, the domaine is owned and run by the Bernard family.

Vacqueyras is one of the Southern Rhône’s top cru wine villages and its wines tend to be more full-blooded than those of the neighbouring cru village of Gigondas. Vacqueyras terroir consists mainly of flat plateaux that bake all summer long under the Provencal sun. The soils are very poor and consist of clay, limestone, stones and some sand - not great for tomatoes and soft fruit but ideal for vines and quality wine. In fact, the clue is in the name: garrigue translates as scrubland, and this is also the name of the area in which the domaine is based.

Domaine la Garrigue picks and sorts all its grapes by hand so that only the best fruit reaches the fermenting vats. For their red wines, whole bunches are lightly crushed and transferred directly to the vats. La Garrigue cherishes the grape stalks, as it believes they enhance the terroir characteristics of its wines. The domaine then relies on the naturally occurring wild yeasts (found on the bloom of each grape) to ferment the grape sugars in to alcohol. Each grape berry is resident to thousands of different varieties of wild yeasts, all imparting their own individual wine characteristics. As such, wild yeasts play a crucial role in the diverse flavours of terroir. (In contrast, winemakers who like to have more control of the fermentation process and the flavours generated add commercially cultivated yeasts that help communicate consistent, known characteristics to their wines.)

All Domaine la Garrigue’s red wines exhibit good tannins derived, amongst other things, from the clay in the soil and the old average age of the vines (older vines yield smaller, more concentrated grapes). These tannins do not dominate the wines because of la Garrigue’s "softly, softly" approach in the cellar - a gentle pumping of the fermenting juice over the red grape skins (where the tannin and colour reside). They do not push the skins into the juice (pigeage), as they feel this would release levels of tannin that would dominate the other (terroir) flavours.

Have the courage to do "nothing". This is the philosophy of some of France’s top vignerons seeking to express the particular characteristics of their vineyards’ terroir (soil, microclimate and topography) in the wines that they produce. These vignerons attempt to avoid any activity or intervention in the winemaking cellar that might crowd out or suppress the wine characteristics of their individual terroir.

Domaine la Garrigue in Vacqueyras is an excellent example of what is sometimes called "non-intervention" winemaking.