The roses look magnificent at Sainte Rose at this time of year, but more crucially for us the vines are also having a successful flowering. There has been a lot of publicity about the frost damage all over France this year and we did suffer a tiny amount of frost damage in one parcel of our Merlot. This however has been of very little consequence compared to the catastrophic impact that frost has had in many other areas of the Herault, France and Europe.

The months of May and June are a period of vigorous growth for the vines and our team is busy lifting the wires to ensure that the leaf canopy is supported as it grows and that air continues to circulate around the fruit wire as the grapes begin to develop. We have also started using our brand new trimmer to keep the inter-row space clean and tidy.

Over the past two months we have divided and renovated several more of the huge concrete tanks in the winery, which we have never been able to use due to their size. Three 300-hectolitre tanks have now become six 100-hectolitre tanks and have been installed with stainless steel fittings and lined with Epoxy so that we can keep them spotlessly clean. These will come in extremely useful this harvest, when we will be bringing in additional grapes from our new parcels of Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier.

Finally, you will have seen that we have refreshed our Sainte Rose logo and website and we will be rolling out these changes to our product packaging as the year progresses. We hope you like the more refined and contemporary branding!