Le Château d'Agel - Cave et vinification

Our wine in all its colors

Each vintage, we work to show the qualities and richness of our terroir through our wines. Our objective is not to repeat the same recipe over and over again, but to adapt the way we work to the character of the year’s harvest.

Deciding to start harvesting is a crucial decision, with far-reaching consequences. At Château d’Agel, in order to be sure to start harvesting our grapes in the ideal moment we also, beside the usual analysis of the juice, taste the berries daily until they reach the desired maturity. We then harvest at the rhythm of the grape varieties.

The grapes are sorted, de-stemmed and crushed to bring out all the aromas contained in the berries.

We practice a traditional vinification. The grapes are harvested by hand on some of our plots.

The grape varieties and plots are vinified separately, in order to bring out their different characteristics and to allow us a more precise blending of the final wine.

Fermentation takes place in vats, with temperature control. One of our wines, the Château d’Agel, is vinified in 400-liter oak barrels. The maceration of the skins is more or less long depending on the profile of the wines we wish to obtain.

During the alcoholic fermentation, we proceed to pumping over: the grape juice located at the bottom of the vat is pumped back to the top of the vat.

The purpose of this operation is to supply oxygen to the yeasts, to homogenize the fermenting fruit juice and to allow the extraction of the desired components in the grape skin into the juice.

During this period, we keep a strict control of the temperatures, in order to keep all the aromas and to allow the yeasts to finish the fermentation

The vinification takes place in concrete vats of different capacities (50 to 150 hl) for the red wines as well as in stainless steel vats for the white and rosé wines.

Our high-end red wines are aged in 400-liter oak barrels of French oak for 12 months. The other red wines remain in the vats until bottling to keep their fruity aromas and freshness.

Beyond the technical gestures, we pay special attention to the vinification of each of our wines and take the time necessary to find the perfect balance.