Château Capucine, Rhône Valley (France)
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Christophe Coste must be far and away the most dynamic winemaker in the Côtes du Rhône Village of Signargues. He makes a range of stunningly good wines. 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 agreed. 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" |
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