Château la Verrerie

The estate

History
Château La Verrerie is in Puget-sur-Durance, a peaceful village nestling at the southern tip of the Luberon mountain range, where prehistoric man first carved wine vats from the rock over 4,000 years ago.
Before the latter-day revival of this wine-growing tradition, Château La Verrerie housed a glass-making business.
The exceptional vines lay dormant for centuries before regaining their rightful place in the local heritage.

The terroir
Located some 30 minutes from Avignon on the southern slopes of the Luberon mountains, the Château La Verrerie vineyard benefits from an exceptional geographical location and climate.
The Château sits beneath an often cloudless Provincial sky where annual sunshine hours can be as high as 2,600.
The terraced vines overlooking the Vallée de la Durance are cooled by the gentle night breeze. This kind of thermal contrast is conducive to producing wines of a particular finesse.
The final piece in this remarkable terroir jigsaw is the clay and limestone soil with its pebbly deposits. The clay helps keep the roots cool and distils water as and when required, while the pebbles reflect the sun´s rays.

Traditional and innovative wine-making techniques

The fermenting room was dug out beneath vineyard level. This enables transfer of harvested grapes by the force of gravity, which eliminates the need for a pump and ensures that the fruit is treated with due consideration.

Red wine
The grape must is refrigerated for a few days in thermoregulated stainless-steel vats so as to bring out all of the fruit´s flavour (the fruitiness).
The fermentation process begins naturally, under controlled temperatures. Pumping over operations are conducted daily with the juice from the bottom of the vat being pumped over the cap of grape skins.
Then the whole batch is thoroughly mixed.
The maceration process lasts 3 to 4 weeks depending on the vintage and, above all, the intermediate tastings.
Then comes the run-off phase. The grape juice is turned into wine and then aged according to grape variety in 30 to 50 hl vats.
A slow, gentle bottom-up oxygenation process serves to structure and enhance the wine. The final touch comes with the assemblage.

Rosé wine
The rosé is a saignée (made from free-run juice). We sample the juice during the red wine pre-fermentation maceration phase. It is important to choose the right moment when the colour is at its optimum.
The red grape juice is vinified in the same way as the white : left to settle at a refrigerated temperature, controlled fermentation at 17-18°C.

White wine
Stalks are separated from the grape bunches. Pressing of round grapes is performed gently using pneumatic wine presses.
The juice is chilled to 4-5°C in order to deposit the solids. Now clarified, it is fermented at 17-18°C, which is the necessary temperature for obtaining a fruity wine.
Ageing on lees with stirring until March ensures mellowness and volume. The wine will be bottled in April.