2018 Alphonse Mellot Sancerre Generation XIX Rouge Loire, France

Tasting notes: Ask it for everything, and it can give you everything... Beautiful ruby red colour, firm and deep - ripe appearance. Its nose is rich and complex.

This wine is seductive, packed with culture and very distinctive, plucking for our pleasure mulberries, bilberries and morello cherries and offers us Eastern spices - pink peppercorns, vanilla and cinnamon on a crisp background. The taste is seductive and very full. Predominantly well balanced, the effect is powerful and rich in alcohol; it surrounds and covers. The fruit and spices go with a fine woody with ripe tannins. A great wine...

Harvest: The Génération XIX Vintage has been produced for 62 years on a parcel of land (Chambratte and Paradis).

Average yield: 21 hl/ha

It is picked by hand in small 25 Kg boxes. Thanks to a vibrating table followed by a sorting table, all grapes have been sorted, stemmed and transported into the wine vats by conveyor belt. It is fermented in 45 hl truncated wooden vats.

Area: 1 ha

Grape variety: Pinot Noir

Exposition: Southeast

Soil: Saint-Doulchard marls (solids lumps).

Subsoil: Upper Lusitanian to Portlandian period cretaceous.

Planting density: 10 000 vinestocks / ha.

Viticulture

The vines are pruned by the simple Guyot method. The vineyard is trained in organic and biodynamic vine growing.

Winemaking: Cold maceration is carried out for 8 to 12 days then fermentation starts. During this time, the cap of skins is punched and a little must is added (about once a day). Fermentation temperatures do not exceed 28°C to retain all the Pinot Noir aromas. Fermentation lasts on average 4 weeks. It is taken from the vats by conveyor and then delicately pressed. Press wine is blended with free run wine or made into wine separately. All the wine is pumped straight into casks for malolactic fermentation after settling. It is aged in new casks for 14 months on average.

About 2800 bottles of the Génération Vintage are produced and it is bottled by us on the estate.