the winemaking
in the cellar, our work is simple !
But simplicity is never easy. First of all, we seek purity in our wines. Our obsession is that of the Japanese painter who spends his life to succeed in drawing a line. Obviously, this work begins in the vineyards and is partly a reflection of our terroir, but it is necessary to finalise it in the cellar.
red wines
Having chosen purity for all our wines, we then choose two types of vinification for our reds.
- the classic Bordeaux vinification, with de-stemming and manual pumping over to extract only the best from the skins. The art of this work lies in the pressing (with a small vertical cage press). The batches of presses are separated as much as possible to be tasted with our oenologist Édouard Lambert from the Boissenot laboratory in Lamarque en Médoc. This is our attachment to the left bank but above all it is the guarantee of the highest quality for our wines. We are very proud to make all the decisions for our estate on our own, but we must bow to Edouard’s tasting skills ! During the blending process, the presses will therefore be integrated in their proper proportion.
- the whole bunch vinification. After having practised it for 8 years at Soula in the Roussillon, Gérald applies it to Terrasson.
white wine
Our white is made without any oenological embellishments.
The harvest is manual and the pressing is done with our small vertical press. This is a long and crucial step. Contrary to what we learn at school, we do a pressing without protection against oxidation and moreover this pressing is very long. This allows us to make a slight extraction of tannins which will bring a little more density on the palate.
We let the malolactic fermentation take place naturally. This allows the wine to be more stable and to develop a different aromatic palette.
orange wine
We also make an orange wine which has been Gérald’s speciality since 2009.
This wine is made from white grapes vinified like a red, with maceration.
At Terrasson, maceration is whole bunch for 10 to 20 days.
The resulting wine is darker in colour than a white and structured in the same way as a red. Therefore it needed an adjective to differentiate it from a white.
David Harvey, a wine merchant in the UK, and Isabelle Legeron, a wine journalist friend in the UK, coined the term “orange wine” in the 2010s. And Gérald has made a major contribution to getting the term “vin orange” into the French mind.
