The Vineyards and the Vendange

This is the starting point for all great wines. It is here that the fundamentals must be right. It is here where we work with nature to encourage only the best quality and then to carefully select it by hand.

Pontet Bagatelle is a small boutique wine business with only seven hectares of vineyards and although we wish to grow, we never expect to be larger than eight to twelve hectares. We currently have five hectares dedicated to Grenache grapes, one hectare is Cabernet Sauvignon and one hectare is Syrah.

Because we are small we can pay great attention to detail in the vineyard. We exercise great care to ensure that the grapes have perfect maturity with much analysis during the growing period to enhance flavour, expression and structure. A vendange verte picking in July reduces our quantity even further but helps to ensure our quality.

The vendange itself is not a casual affair. We hire a team of experienced pickers who select the grapes from the vines by hand. We leave behind anything that is not ripe enough or that does not meet our quality threshold. We pick only from the mature branches of the vines, again leaving the small grapes behind that are growing on lateral branches.

We use dry ice or refrigerated transport to keep the grapes cool before they get back to the cellar to reduce the risk of fermentation beginning.

"Magnificent nose giving off intense and delicious floral aromas. A hearty and thirst quenching rosé" - Jacques Dupont in Le Point magazine published on 12th June 2008