Winemaking
As a chef, I was taught everything starts with quality ingredients. But before you decide on the dish you want to cook, you must taste your ingredients.
Wine is no different. We grow beautiful organic grapes on vines maintained individually by hand in environmental conditions that encourage quality and character.
Towards the end of the growing season, we begin to check the size, weight, colour, sugar, acidity, aromas and feeling we get from each of the 22 plots within our 4.25ha vineyard. Not until then do we begin to consider the wines we will make that year.
I am not driven by a desire to make a particular style or to replicate a previous wine. I want to match what has grown with a style that intrigues me and allows the fruit’s natural beauty to shine.
I believe that natural winemaking is the only way to unlock a wine's individuality and potential. An alive, evolving, dynamic wine is the true expression of terroir.
We make zero-zero wine: no added sulphites and no mechanical filtration.
Each wine is matured until it is stable and consistent before bottling to ensure we deliver the wine we intended.
The Vineyard
Our 4.5 ha vineyard produces around 20,000 bottles of wine per year and is situated in one block next to the Dordogne River. We have a wide selection of classic Bordeaux grape varietals including Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Cabernet Noir, Petit Verdot, Sauvignon Blanc and Sémillion that have been organically cultivated for 30 years.
This year we will also plant Malbec, another classic Bordeaux varietal, as well as Chenin Blanc and Souvignier Gris, a disease resistant PIWI varietal.
Shuette is just 25 minutes away from central Bordeaux. Located on the banks of the Dordogne River.
A massive river that makes us what we are. Over thousands of years, the river has created a soil rich with clay and mineral schist, making the perfect foundation for growing crops. Today, the Dourdougne still provides us with frost protection, a cooling breeze, summer morning fog and significant diurnal temperature changes.
Our farm is 12 ha in total. Throughout and around the whole farm and vineyard we have well over 250 fruit trees and nearly 280 bird, bat and owl boxes.
We leave at least 3 metres of wild hedgerow and borders to ensure wild animals have a stable habitat. To help ensure our larger wild visitors feel welcome we have built a wildlife corridor through the vineyard that is regularly used by deer, wild boar and rabbits.
Our interrow planting (between the vines) is just as important, with a careful mix of nitrogen-fixing, flowering and deep rooted plants selected for the best possible ecological value.
