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April 28th 2008 - ALEXIS IS PROUD
OF HIS LITTLE BROTHER NATHAN!

A little Nathan was born on April 28th 2008 to Sébastien and Marie-Julienne. Among the numerous descendants of Isidora and Ferdinand, he is the 6th great great grandchild whose parents work at the Mas d'Intras. We plan to initiate him in the know-how of his ancestors!!! ;-)

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2008 IN THE VINEYARD
Changeable weather conditions!

In 2008, our vines suffered from an extremely dry winter, followed by a record pluviometry: 1600 mm of rain fell in between March and December which was never measured before in our area!

Our early grape varieties were damaged by frost in April but in spite of that we never failed to have confidence in our vines. The work in the vineyard though has been intense. To make up for the lack of sunshine and the overflow of humidity we had to de-bud very severely the total surface of the vineyard (see picture beneath),

and manually thin out the leaves on some of the parcels (see picture beneath).

Thanks to this fastidious job the grape clusters did soon find a nice aspect again. We did not have much sunshine during the summer months and for that reason the grapes did never seem to come to maturity. The bad weather did really get on our nerves!
Mid-September the grapes were still on the vine-trunks while the vineyard started to take autumn colours... a very unusual situation that permitted us to take some beautiful pictures of grape clusters surrounded by bright autumn colours!

The harvest of red grape varieties only started on September 28th, 20 days later than in an average year. Thanks to the manual work done all year through in the vineyard, we were able to harvest grapes in an excellent sanitary condition!
The hard work, combined with the good exposition of our soil, resulted in a crop that was superior to our expectations: healthy grapes with little damage of botrytis, a largely sufficient sugar content and a good acidity.

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2008 IN THE CELLAR
A very acceptable vintage year!

Once the cooler autumn days were there, we were able to realise pre- fermentation macerations on the majority of our tanks. The Grenache and the Syrah grapes stayed 5 weeks under grape pomace in order to obtain the usual richness.
The solar energy installation has been of great use during the fermentations. When the sun didn't shine old trunks and dead wood were burned in the boiler to complement the heating.
Here a document in french about our solar energy installation, realised with the help of the french energy ministery.

Isidora 2008 and Montagnère 2008 will soon be bottled and released after maturing some months on the lees.

At the end we have a nice vintage year, with well balanced and very fruity wines. We were even able to realise a long time wish; we vinified a beautiful pure Chardonnay in oak barrels. This wine will be released by the end of 2009.

We would like to invite you to our Open Days to come taste our 2007 and 2008 Cuvées.
Of course you can also come all year through to our tasting room!

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You'll find more photos and details about the harvest 2008 here (interesting to read and to see).

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