French wine comes in at 9% ABV, with no de-alcoholisation

o how does South-West co-operative winery group Plaimont manage to produce a 9.2% ABV wine without de-alcoholising it? “We harvested the Colombard grapes at just above 10% potential alcohol. We blended them with a little Sauvignon and then stopped fermentation at 17 grams of sugar by cooling the tanks to 0°C in 24 hours using a very cold system of glycoled water”, explains Cédric Garzuel, director and head winemaker at the Condom winery where the new label, Elia Liberty, is produced.

Customary amounts of sulphites were used and the wines were kept at low temperatures throughout the maturation process. “We filtered them sterilely just before bottling, like we do for most of our Côtes-de-Gascogne wines to avoid fermentation starting up again due to residual sugar presence”, adds Garzuel.

Plaimont’s aim was not to de-alcoholise the low-alcohol wine. “We have never been satisfied with what we tried or experimented with”, explains the head winemaker. “And we didn’t want to ‘tamper’ with the wines to achieve a worthwhile style”.

The winemakers at Plaimont chose Colombard because it naturally reaches aromatic ripeness before 11% potential alcohol. “We went off in search of cool vineyard sites, north-facing blocks producing grapes that we would previously have had to chaptalize to reach the right alcohol level”, continues Garzuel. This particular Colombard was harvested at 10% potential alcohol, “slightly acidic but very aromatic”, pressed then put into tanks.