It is a busy day at Sainte Rose today with two different red varieties being picked by two different methods.  Early this morning, the machine harvester started picking Syrah, which has now been transferred to tank for maceration and fermentation.  After vinification and oak ageing, this Syrah will be blended with Grenache and Mourvedre to become our iconic wine, La Garrigue.  

Meanwhile a team of hand pickers are busy picking our 60 year old Grenache, situated on the the more gravelly soils of the plateau.  Some of this concentrated, hand-picked fruit will create the Vielle Vignes Grenache for Naked Wines and some will go towards the La Garrigue blend.  It is a cooler day in the Languedoc, with slightly overcast skies, something the picking team are pleased about as it will allow them to pick for most of the day.

Hand picking will continue tomorrow with more old vine Grenache.  These vines started their life as ‘bush vines’ without any posts and wires to trellis them.  They do now have the support of trellising, but given their age and their remarkable gnarled shapes, we prefer to gently hand pick rather than machine harvest them.