In the Winery

"OUR SPARKLING STYLE: EASY-GOING, WITH FRUIT AND TENSION.”

Our bubblies are really down to earth. They are a reflection of our rainy autumns, cold winters, unpredictable springs and short but intense summers. They don’t try to emulate the luxury branding of Champagne. Quite the opposite, in fact. They’re made for the present moment, the true moments of everyday life. Spur of the moment drinks with people who really count, rather than starchy formal events. Our bubblies are for drinking between friends, pinkies down.

Sometimes refreshing, sometimes bursting with tension, our sparkling wines are always bright, dry, with a destabilising dose of bright fruit–and always ready to go for an apéro.

OUR SPARKLING STYLES

TRADITIONAL METHOD

In the beginning, traditional method was an obvious choice for us, and since then, it’s kept affirming itself as an appropriate approach, vintage after vintage. The prism of double fermentation is the most suitable one for expressing the full potential of our climate, our soils and our grape varieties.

All our wines are aged at least 15 months on lees, and in some cases up to 30 months. Since brut nature isn’t for everybody, a liqueur made of wine and organic beet sugar can be added at disgorging to balance out bitterness or the intense acidity of some of the sparkling wines.

Every step of the traditional method vinification is done by hand, which means that a bottle is handled 18 times before it is released from the winery.

UNDISGORGED SECOND FERMENTATION

The nice thing about wine is that if you take the time to listen to it and give it a chance to express itself, it naturally points the way. That’s what happened with our undisgorged second fermentation wine, originally destined to stay in the cellar and become a reserve wine. When we did a pressure test and tasted the wine, it was so delicious that we finally went ahead with a crazy idea: releasing it as is, in its juvenile phase. Effervescent without being a full on sparkling wine, it has half the pressure of our traditional method wines.

PÉTILLANT NATUREL (DISGORGED)

Anything beyond traditional method sparkling is not exactly a planned thing, for us, but what can you do: we are a creative and curious bunch. This is why we decided to give pétillants naturels a try, made with the same care as our traditional method wines, but with a lower effervescence.

The base wine was fermented at low temperatures to preserve the aromatic character, and after several rackings, we transferred it to bottle to finish fermenting. We should describe it as an ancestral method wine because we gave it a basic disgorging to take out the rather explosive effects of its tartric deposit – which distinguishes it from pet nats that are often undisgorged.

THE WINERY

In the winery, everything is organized to vinify in the most natural way possible. This is why we try to reduce the amount of manipulations and external inputs as much as possible. Our alcoholic fermentations use indigenous yeasts, and the same goes for our malolactic conversions. Since we count on time to do the work, no filtration or fining are required, except for wines sold to the state monopoly, which are fined with yeast hulls. Finally, minimal amounts of sulphur are used at the start of the process, when pressing the grapes – but only when required. If ever we need to set a wine in a different direction, then we do it using endogenous materials, as much as possible with natural elements that are already at hand. The most important thing for us is to make good wine, and all the better if it’s natural!

MODERN DESIGN WITH AN ECOLOGICAL OUTLOOK

Our winery was designed to minimize its ecological footprint. Built like the root cellars of old, it is naturally cooled, which helps lower its energy consumption considerably. Moreover, windows overlooking the tanks allow the wines to naturally cool down in winter.

Most of the materials used in the building were taken from the winery’s natural surroundings—including Township pine, Sherbrooke slate and driftwood from the Outaouais river.

In the same manner, materials used to package and sell our wines have been specifically chosen for their low environmental impact:

• Bottles made in part from recycled glass

• Bottles recycled through the recycling program introduced by Hatley Township’s municipal government

• Pyrographed corks, rather than printed

• Environmentally-friendly labels using 100% FSC certified paper (ensuring that the paper producers are replanting to compensate for tree cuts)

• Environmentally-friendly glue for the labels

• Cardboard boxes made in a Québec plant employing workers with physical disabilities