Greetings Readers of Our Wine Story. This is the continuation in a series of posts dedicated to an interview held with Captûre’s winemasters Denis and May-Britt Malbec. We hope this series will allow you an eye-opening view into our winemasters’ origins, opinions, and passions for wine.
Denis, the Captûre bottles have a raised punt. Why have the bottles been chosen with this shape in mind?
Denis: In Bordeaux, we got this shape because it’s the way we would make the bottles–but, little by little, we learned that over time in bottle aging, the deposit goes down. With this shape, it eliminates the problems with deposit.
What is deposit?
May-Britt: Deposit is molecules that are unstable in the wine that combines and get bigger and heavier with aging. These solid particles are settling to the bottom of the bottle. This is the reason why you let an older bottle stand for a couple of days, so that it will be easier to decant the wine and eliminate the deposit before enjoying the wine.
And, what about the selection process for the oak barrels?
Denis: This is another good, long topic I can hardly convey in one answer, but I’ll try my best. With barrels there is still sustainability, you cut the tree and kill the tree, but the forests are replanted and reseeded. We aren’t going to run out of barrels. I imagine the forests in France are going to be the same 200 years from now as before cutting started. Even today, the forest is actually a lot better than it used to be. The acreage and quality of the wood is not changing for the worse.
Is there a preference to the barrels?
Denis: When it comes to high quality wine. I like to use a barrel for two vintages. I’m a strong believer in using a lot of new barrels for fermentation. It took me 30 years to learn what I know about barrels and it’s not something I can explain easily. It takes a while to know what we know, the relationship between barrel and wine is very intricate. In general, what we like to work with is Medium Toast. Know that it doesn’t necessarily mean the same technique: a medium toast with two different coopers is not exactly the same. What we call medium can also be medium plus, medium light, or medium medium. What I prefer to use is a long toasting at low temperature. The reason for this is to respect the quality of the wine, not only to give it taste, we are looking to make it more complete and complex.
May-Britt: The barrel should enhance the quality of the wine and improve it, not mask or degrade it.
Denis: All the coopers we work with, we’ve been working with them for years and years. Even when I left Château Latour, I brought with me my own coopers. It’s incredible, because in the early 70s, the barrel was more of a container, it was a way to keep the wine and age the wine, but we didn’t have the knowledge we have today.
You must have a lot of experience with coopers in France.
Denis: I know more or less all of the coopers in France. Among the good coopers in France, I work only with the coopers I like and I feel there’s a good relationship. When I see that the cooper is a part of the winemaking, when he likes to taste with us and understand what we like, I appreciate that. Using these barrels is like starting with a recipe that I think will work with this kind of wine.
May-Britt: Yes, just like when you have a recipe for food, you’re able to make it, but then over the years you make little changes to the recipe. All of a sudden, that same recipe has been mastered 10 years later and it is truly better than when you first started. That is the same idea as when you are creating a recipe for the wine. It takes time working with the same recipe, making little changes to know when it has improved.
To be continued…