Bordeaux winegrowers turn to grape juice

ince 2018, Alice de Courcel, head of communications and wine tourism at Château Saint Ahon has been providing grape juice for the children of families tasting wine at the property. The juice is made from grapes grown at the estate but pasteurised outside the region due to lack of local service providers. “When Aymeric told us about the new HIC cider works, we thought it could be a great opportunity to relocate our production back to the region”.

Marion Derycke and Jérémy Rouxel, the couple at the helm of the HIC cider works, immediately liked the idea of becoming service providers. A few months after launching HIC, they reinvested in tanks, a pasteuriser, a four nozzle bottling machine and a semi-manual labelling machine. “We also acquired an entire fruit sorting and washing line as well as a pneumatic press so that we could offer our services to other winegrowers and fruit growers”, explains Derycke. Since 2022, Aymeric Van Gelderen, the technical director at Château Saint Ahon, has pressed and racked the equivalent of 1,000 litres of fruity, sweet must, mostly Merlot, at harvest time in the winery at Saint Ahon. Once clarified, the must is delivered in a small tank to the cider works where it is immediately pasteurised and packed in 33 cl bottles. “This is the format best suited to wine tourism, our grocery store and restaurateurs”, says de Courcel. “At the request of our clients, we also market 25cl and 1-litre formats as well as 3 and 5-litre boxes starting this year. We can also handle labelling and packaging in boxes”, adds Derycke.

Seven other winegrowers have now followed in Saint Ahon’s footsteps and use HIC as their service provider. To date, though, diversification into grape juice has not generated more profit than wine.