The vineyard - Chateau de Caraguilhes

Our approach to vine growing

Creating elegant, silky, expressive wines with beautiful drinkability, yet with a distinctive personality, is an approach that begins in the vineyard — or, more precisely, in the soil.

The vine can only express itself and reach its full potential when it is supported by healthy, living soil.

That is the true work of the winegrower.

Working with biodynamics

Our vineyard has been certified organic since 1987 — almost 40 years.

Since 2015, we have chosen to complement this approach with biodynamic practices. We obtained Biodyvin certification in 2020.

Biodynamic

The importance of plant material

Choosing the right plant material is always a challenge. It is a relationship of trust that we build with our nursery partners.

Choosing grape varieties

Choosing rootstocks

Choosing massal selection

More recently, we have also chosen massal selection for a significant proportion of our new plantings.

Massal selection helps preserve the diversity and personality of a vineyard.

Massal selection

Biodynamics is a holistic approach aimed at caring for the Earth and nourishing people and animals.

It is an approach within organic agriculture and should be considered as a complement to other forms of farming. It is first and foremost about relying on sound agronomy and the principles shared with organic farming, and then taking this approach further through biodynamics. For us, agronomy and the preservation of living soils remain our foremost concern.

It is above all an agricultural approach that seeks to regenerate plant health, thereby reducing the need to fight pests and diseases. The aim is to produce food of high quality: healthy, full of vitality, flavourful and nourishing.

For us, biodynamics is a path we have chosen, just as we have chosen genetic diversity, to give our vineyard greater resilience and prepare it for the future.

To achieve this, we follow several essential principles:

Organic compost : this is the cornerstone of our approach. We make our own compost using manure from our sheepfold, from the neighbouring goat farm, and grape marc from our winemaking. It is spread over our parcels in autumn.
Preparation 500, or horn manure: applied as a spray, particularly in early spring. It plays a fundamental role because it is intended to work on the soil and plant roots. It is a powerful builder of soil structure and promotes microbial activity.
Preparation 501, or horn silica: sprayed during the growing season. It acts on the aerial parts of the plants during their vegetative growth. It is essential for the plant’s internal structure and development.
Maria Thun cow-pat pit compost : CBMT is an excellent decomposer of organic matter, particularly following the mowing and incorporation of our winter cover crops in March. We generally spray it twice before applying Horn Manure preparation 500.

This entire approach is part of our agronomic philosophy, whose aim is to revitalise our soils and our vineyard.

These grape varieties accompany us in revealing the character of our site: Syrah, Grenache Blanc, Grenache Gris and Grenache Noir, Carignan Blanc and Carignan Noir, Cinsault, Mourvèdre, Piquepoul Noir and Piquepoul Blanc, Roussanne and Vermentino.

More recently, in response to a warmer and drier climate, we have added small amounts of Counoise and Oeillade among our red varieties, and Terret among our white varieties.

The diversity of grape varieties and microclimatic conditions gives us an extraordinarily rich palette of aromas, colours and flavours, allowing us to create unique blends that express the subtlety of each site.

We seek to reveal this subtlety even further through the right choice of plant material — material that will accompany us for decades, and particularly through the choice of rootstock.

This is a crucial step in ensuring the long-term sustainability of the vineyard and the quality of the wines it can produce.

Our soils are predominantly limestone-based, with rather limited water availability. A large part of the vineyard is therefore planted on Fercal and 110 Richter rootstocks.

Some areas with deeper soils are planted with 420A or 3309 — the latter being less well suited to our conditions. More recently, we have begun developing 333 EM, in response to the long periods of drought we have experienced.

Each soil has its own appropriate rootstock, and it is not uncommon for us to find several different rootstocks within the same parcel.

Massal selection consists of replanting vines from the best individual plants — those we consider best suited to our objectives — already growing within a parcel. Rather than planting vines derived from standardised clones, we work with nurseries to select individual vine plants that we consider particularly resilient and of high quality. These vines are then propagated from cuttings and replanted.

These selections are not necessarily made within our own vineyard. We recently planted a massal selection of Carignan Blanc, with the original vines sourced from different terroirs across the Corbières.

The aim of these selections is to preserve the vineyard’s genetic diversity. Since each vine is slightly different, this approach also contributes to greater complexity and richness in the resulting wines.

Clonal selection, which is now widespread, is based on propagating a single vine selected for specific qualities such as yield, resistance or other characteristics. This produces a more homogeneous vineyard, but reduces diversity.

For this reason, when using clonal material, we make a point of planting at least five or six different clones in order to maintain diversity and improve the vineyard’s resilience.

By investing in genetic diversity, we are preparing our vineyard for the future, while striving to produce wines that express their terroir as faithfully as possible.