Come on... Let's go! Five years of harvesting! On the first pass at Clos des Corvées we only pick the 'millerandées' bunches, we only want the 'Millerand'. To explain to everyone, 'Millerand', are the bunches with very small berries. They are very concentrated in fruit, little water, lots of sugar, and that is what really produces the best of the best. It's what we use to make a special 'cuvée' that we call 'Clos des Corvées'. Clos de Bèze: we're lucky to have a vineyard practically 100 years old. It's vines are a very fine lineage, of very fine pinot. We pick almost 170 kilos of grapes to make 100 litres of wine, normally most consider 120 kilos to be sufficient. Many of the domaine's wines qualify as 'natural wines'. They are only made from what comes from the vine. This means no herbicides, no insecticides, or pesticides. It means stimulatiing the vines' natural systems of defence, so the plants themselves can fight off disease. To make a great wine there is only one way to start, that is to have great grapes. The wine makes itself on the vine, not in the winery. To harvest when the grapes are at peek ripeness, is to take a big risk. It is so much easier to pick 10 days earlier, the grapes are much less affected by maladies. However, then chaptalization is necessary. This makes the wine imbalanced, so you acidify, to correct that. We prefer to work with the vintage, that is to say respect each year climactically for what it was. These principles that we apply in the vineyard, must also continue in the winery. No adding of any yeast, no acidification, and no chaptalization. It's respecting as much as possible the raw material. At Domaine Prieuré Roch we don't de-stem, we keep the bunches whole, the grapes are still attached, so the fermentation starts inside each berry, and not in the must. Here it develops a considerable aromatic palette... this becomes evident at the end of alcoholic fermentation. We do not use any sulphites either, during vinification, for the simple reason that we know how to do without. thus any unnecessary products are eliminated. Barrel ageing at Domaine Prieuré Roch is straightforward. Because the wines are put in barrel, in October or November at the end of fermentation. It ages there 18 months for the young vines and 'Villages' wines, and up to 24 months for the 'Grands Crus'. Barrel ageing is limited to 24 months. It's because we don't have the capacity to handle more than two vintages. Of course longer barrel ageing is the historical norm here in Burgundy. We will need to establish more space and time to develop this as well. I check regularly to see if the wine is cloudy or not. As we don't filter our wines we need to rack them off to clear them. So when the wine starts to get cloudy, and the lees come, I close the valve and go to the next barrel. Clos de Bèze, Clos Vougeot, les Suchots, les Hautes Maiziéres, les Clous, Clos Goillotte, Clos des Corvées, Nuit Un, Nuit Premier Cru, Nuit Premier Crus Vielles Vignes, Ladoix Rouge, Ladoix Blanc, BGO. All the vineyards are worked in the same way. All the wines are also vinified in the same way, aged in the same way. As a result, for the same vintage when we produce 13 or 15 different wines, we will have in fact 15 different tastes. This can only be an expression of their 'terroir', the soil from which they have grown. -Cheers! -Cheers!