Franck Moureau has been the winemaker at his family’s property for over 15 years. He represents the 9th generation of an old St Emilion family. He likes his wine to taste of the grapes grown in these prestigious soils of St Emilion using minimal treatments, intervention and sulphites during the winemaking. When you come to visit the winery you will be able to meet Franck the winemaker and ask your questions face to face. That’s what a small independent producer is. The person who runs the estate, also looks after the vines, tends the soil the vines live in and the winemaking. You can tell from the soil on his shoes.
They say a wine producer in Bordeaux has three heads! One to look after the brand new vintage that is growing in the vineyards (you’d better not miss a treatment, Bordeaux’s hot and wet maritime climate is perfect for fungal disease!)
Another head is needed to keep an eye on the vintage in the barrels that ages for over a year cleaning itself, stabilising and taking on some gentle tannins and flavours of vanilla and mocha coffee. The last head is needed to get the wine that has finished ageing into the bottle and ready to be commercialised.
Franck’s priority lies with the embryo vintage in the vineyards. He manages a number of different plots throughout the year – it is called Plot by Plot Viticulture and Vinification. The moment of picking is perhaps the most important decision as each plot is different but in fact the plots are all treated differently throughout the year from grass management, fertilising to leaf plucking. Franck walks through his vineyards with his dog, Ethan keeping an eye on the vine’s development and adapting the work.
The key plots are detailed here and are all clay sand and some limestone. So the grapes are picked in each vineyard plot and are vinified in their own vat. In fact Franck makes a separate wine from each plot. That totals to around 20 different wines, that he then blends at the end of the ageing.
