Chateau Les Guyonnets 2018 Cadillac Cotes de Bordeaux《F754》

Chateau Les Guyonnets 2018 Cadillac Cotes de Bordeaux《F754》

Château Les Guyonnets is located in Verdelais, Gironde, France, in the southern part of the Cadillac Côtes de Bordeaux appellation. It occupies a limestone slope on the right bank of the Garonne River, boasting a superb geographical advantage overlooking the entire valley. This land has a rich historical background; it was once the holiday estate of Henri de Toulouse Lautrec, the master of French Post-Impressionist painting. The fusion of art and nature here gives this vineyard a unique cultural character.

In 2000, Sophie and Didier Tordeur, a husband-and-wife team from an agricultural family in northern France, acquired the winery, beginning a new chapter in its history. Driven by a deep passion for wine and generations of agricultural experience, the couple has adhered to a winemaking philosophy of "respecting terroir and returning to the essence" for over two decades, transforming their 25-hectare vineyard into a benchmark boutique winery in the Cadillac Côtes de Bordeaux appellation.

The winery's vineyards cover approximately 25 hectares, with 20 hectares planted with red grape varieties and the remaining 5 hectares with white grape varieties. The soil is primarily clay-limestone, topped with fine gravel, providing excellent drainage. This allows the vines to retain water during dry seasons while also encouraging them to root deeply, absorbing minerals and nutrients from the deeper soil layers, ultimately imparting a unique minerality and robust structure to the wines.

The winery is renowned for its stringent standards in cultivation and management. In 2018, the winery officially embarked on its organic farming transformation, simultaneously obtaining the highest level of French agricultural certification, HVE 3 (High Environmental Value). This strictly limits the use of chemical agents and promotes a low-yield planting model, with yields per hectare far below the legal limit for the region, ensuring that every bunch of grapes reaches perfect ripeness and flavor concentration.

In winemaking, the winery adheres to a "minimal intervention" philosophy, using traditional techniques as the core while combining them with modern precision temperature control technology to preserve the authentic flavors and terroir characteristics of the grapes to the greatest extent possible.

Harvesting and Sorting: Once the grapes reach optimal ripeness, they are harvested using mechanized precision. Immediately after harvesting, they are sent to the cellar for double manual sorting, removing diseased, unripe, and immature grapes. Only plump, perfectly ripe grapes are retained for the winemaking process, controlling the quality of the wine from the source.

Fermentation and Maceration: After light crushing, the sorted grapes are placed in stainless steel temperature-controlled fermentation tanks for alcoholic fermentation at a constant temperature of 26-28°C for approximately 10-15 days. During fermentation, a gentle process involving timed pump-over and light cap pressing is used to tenderly extract tannins, pigments, and flavor compounds from the grapes, avoiding bitterness from over-extraction while preserving the fresh fruit aromas. After alcoholic fermentation, a second maceration period of 2-3 weeks further enriches the wine's flavor profile.

Maloid Fermentation: The fermented wine is transferred to oak barrels for malolactic fermentation, transforming the sharp malic acid into softer lactic acid, resulting in a smoother, rounder palate and adding subtle creamy and yeasty notes, enhancing the wine's complexity.

Aging System: The wine is aged for 12 months in French oak barrels, with approximately 30% new oak and the remaining 70% aged in barrels used for 1-2 years. This blend imparts subtle notes of toast, vanilla, cocoa, and coffee through the new oak barrels, while preventing the oak flavors from overly masking the fruit aromas and terroir characteristics, achieving a perfect balance of fruitiness, oakiness, and structure. During aging, the winery's team regularly stirs the barrels and tastes the wine, monitoring its development to ensure consistent quality in every batch.

Bottling and Quality Control: After aging, the wine undergoes light clarification and filtration before being bottled on-site at the winery, with full traceability. Before bottling, the winery team conducts a final tasting to ensure the wine meets the winery's quality standards.