Château Capucine, Châteauneuf-du-Pape
Christophe
Coste must be far and away the most dynamic winemaker in the
newly elevated Côtes du Rhône Village of Signargues. Apart from being president of
the syndicate there, he makes a range of stunningly good wines. In
just ten years, Christophe has expanded the vineyard including a
holding in Châteauneuf, the range has developed and includes several
excellent boutique wines and everything is now recognised as fully
organic. Where next?
More...
Christophe's base is at Domaine de la Charité in Saze,
in the Gard département, west of Avignon.
He has worked his family's estate since completing his degree in
œnology in 1998, making a superb range of Côtes
du Rhône
and Villages wines including spectacular varietal wines (in
particular, Mourvèdre and Syrah cuvées)
and, in years well suited to it, an ice wine!
Everything
has been done organically since day one when Christophe was part of
the Terra Vitis movement. Now he has full
Ecocert-ification.
In 2008, Christophe purchased a single hectare plot of old-vine
Grenache in the Gallimardes sector in the south of Châteauneuf-du-Pape. An early barrel sample (the wine is
raised in second year barrels), showed immense promise but the bottled
wine, a year on, was even better. The critics agree.
Christophe was almost certainly the first
winemaker in the Rhône
Valley to use a sorting machine which sorts the grapes according to
potential alcohol so that only grapes with a potential of more than a
chosen alcohol degree (eg.14%) can be fermented in one tank whilst
grapes with lower sugars go to a different tank. This way the best
part of the harvest goes through a longer maceration period.
Fermentation takes place in steel tanks
which are mounted horizontally and
rotate gently on a central axis to assist in mixing the skins
throughout the fermenting mass.
Furthermore the tanks are constructed in such a way that they can
empty themselves for mass when the free run wine has left the tank and
the cover at the end is removed. This system is called "vinimatic"
