Our eonologist: Marc Grau

Typical production of the “Orpailleur classique”.

Harvest
The harvesting date is established according to the different products.

Under ripe: The aperitif wine “Apérid’Or” so as not to have too much residual sugars. The “Brut de Brut” and the “rosé” to get sufficient acidity.

Ripe: For the “Classique” and “Oak-aged” white wines.

Over ripe for the ice wine.
Harvesting is done by hand, with shears and 14 kg containers.

Crushing:
This operation aims to crush the grapes without crushing the seeds or the stalks. The equipment used is a Vaslin harvest crusher. Grapes are crushed a few hours after they are harvested.

Pressing:
This operation is to extract the must (juice). We separate the liquid part from the solid part (stalks). The harvest is then compressed against a perforated wall made of epoxy resin. The pressing is divided in several presses increasing in pressure, which enables us to extract various qualities of juices. Pressing occurs in a Vaslin horizontal press of 32 hectolitres that holds about 200 grape pails of 14 kg each.

Racking:
The juice coming out of the press is quite cloudy. It holds in suspension particles of stalks, skins, yeast, proteinaceous material, and pectin. So we add pectolytic enzymes to the must which are able to break these pectins, diminishing viscosity. The must is then stored at cool temperatures for 36 hours. During that time the heavier particles drop to the bottom. Only the clarified juice is used for the fermentation.

Yeasting:
Yeasting consists of adding active selected yeasts to the must to provoke alcoholic fermentation.

Fermentation
Alcoholic fermentation must be controlled and mastered with the help of a cooling system to make it as stable and complete as possible. This way, risks of the fermentation halting or of the raw material being altered are avoided. Gradually the sugar content of the must is transformed into alcohol and its density is reduced to finally become the same as that of water.

Chaptalization
Chaptilization: If the sugar content is not high enough to bring the wine to the desired alcohol level, we add sugar to the must when it is fermenting.

De-acidification
This operation consists of neutralizing excess organic acids in the must with a salt. The most commonly used products to do this are potassium tartrate, calcium carbonate, and potassium bicarbonate.

Cooling stage
The cold is an essential factor to stabilize and better wines. It has been known for a long time that the cold of winter can be beneficial to wines by precipitating potassium bitartrate, namely. The process requires dropping the temperature close to wine freezing point. In Québec, thanks to the climate, the cooling stage occurs naturally.

Fining
This process aims to flocculate colloidal matter clouding the wine ad those that might cloud it at an ulterior date.

Filtration
This final operation makes the wine travel through a filter to remove all impurities it may contain. We use three types of filters.
Sheet filter: first coarse filtration.
Sterilizing sheet filter: to stop micro-organisms.
Cartridge filter: Sterilizing filters used just before bottling.

Bottling:
New bottles are rinsed and drained before being filled by a bottling machine, corked, and put on pallets. Capsuling and labelling are done later.