Fifth generation takes winery to 21st century

AT Domaine du Tariquet winery in the French province of Gascony, the fifth generation is in charge. Brothers Armin and Rémy Grassa manage Tariquet together with their Aunt Ma?té. Armin looks after the winery, Rémy handles the marketing, and Ma?té is the life and soul of the estate. Following a series of acquisitions, the original seven hectares of vineyards have grown to 900 hectares, all of them within a distance of 25 kilometres. This means the Domaine du Tariquet is the biggest owner of vineyards on a single appellation, the protected designation of  origin in France. In all, the winery produces  eight  million  bottles of white wine, including 300,000 bottles of rosé and 250,000 bottles of red wine, plus 120,000 bottles of Armagnac.

Armagnac, based on white wines like Cognac,  is  highly  thought  of  amongst brandy  connoisseurs.  Its  high  quality, artisanal  production  methods  and  strict regulatory  framework,  plus  the  small quantities involved, however, meant that Armagnac struggled with serious prestige problems in the post-war years. Back then, demand  plummeted  so  steeply  that  the quality suffered, thus tarnishing the image.

The market for Armagnac continued to falter well into the early 1980s, and this is when Yves Grassa – then in charge of the winery – took a risky but crucial decision to produce white wines as well. The debut wine  was  made  for  the  first  time  from only the Ugni Blanc and Colombard grape varieties used for Armagnac. Tariquet was at that juncture the first winery to be selling wine from Gascony in bottles.

Then Yves took an even bolder step by breaking all the rules of conventional white-winemaking, and ventured to plant varieties underappreciated in the region, such as Chardonnay, Sauvignon or Chenin – and, even worse, he mixed the wines in the cuvée. He combined these varieties, and also Sémillon and the regional grape Gros Manseng to create unconventional wines but marked by harmonious individuality. He was aiming for fruitiness, freshness and refined elegance as the salient gustatory elements. And indeed, it worked. Yves Grassa was voted the ‘Winemaker of the Year’.

In 2007, the highly esteemed Gascon winemaker  retired  completely  from  the viticulture business at the age of 56, and immigrated to Romania to grow cereals. He handed over his portion of the winery to his two sons Armin, 36, and Rémy, 35, with the words: “Young trees don’t flourish in the shadow of their elders. Go your own way.”

Freshness concept
The brothers, both of whom studied agronomy, majoring in oenology, attach paramount priority to top-quality cultivation of the vines and processing of their wines. “For the production operation, for freshness and  aromatic  intensity,  we  keep  our vineyards at an age of 15 to 25 years,” says Armin Grassa.

Six harvesting machine automatically remove stalks and leaves, so that only grapes and juice arrive at the presses. “White wine needs as little movement and oxidation as possible,” he explains. “That is why the grapes are already blanketed with CO2 to keep out the air whilst they are being transported from the field, and at the grape reception station are cooled down with cold water from about 25°C to 15°C.”

Besides the avoidance of oxygen, the temperature is the second important factor for  the  aroma  status&SuperStar SlipOn