Terre de Vertus Premier Cru

Every year the Larmandiers taste each cask and choose between the singularity of a single parcel and the harmony of a blend. Terre de Vertus is the single parcel at home: Les Barillers, mid-slope in Vertus. It has been vinified on its own since 1995, because the house finds the balance already there and sees nothing a blend could add.

The juice goes straight into wood. Fermentation starts on its own yeasts in Stockinger casks and vats, malolactic follows when it starts by itself, and the wine spends its first year on the lees without fining or filtration. Tirage comes at the end of July, with no wine from other years and no other terroir in the bottle.

Then the bottles go down to the cellar to rest on lattes for at least six more years. Each one is disgorged by hand a year before it goes on sale.

The house keeps its dosage to a few grams at most. Here it adds nothing at all, and the only sugar left is usually about a gram of the grapes' own.