Vins de Bourgogne - Mercurey - Domaine Saint-Arroman

The white juicy black grape is coated in a rich red skin.
The purpose of red wine making is to colour the juice, and extract the flavours from the grape and the tanins from the skin.


After the harvest, on arrival in the cuvage, the black grapes are put in a rammer (see photo) which will separate the grapes from the bunch.


The storts are discarded while the juice and the grapes are preserved. Sulphur is added at this time, so as to protect the juice, which in contact with oxygen would be transformed into a brown liquid.

The must, which is the juice with the skin, is put in oak tuns, opened to the air.
The sugar of the must will then be absorbed and processed by yeast present on the skin of the grapes.
This process of fermentation makes the transformation of the sugar into alcohol possible. It takes ten days on average.

When all the sugar has been processed, the yeast have disappeared and the wine has been made.

Once fermentation has taken place, the skins are sorted out from the wine.
The wine can now start to age.
It will be stored for around a year before being bottled.

Only ageing inside oak barrels enables the wine to develop new aroma .
Red Burgundy and Mercurey from the Domain are aging exclusively in recently made oak barrels.

The second fermentation will take place in spring, with the rising temperatures. This is called the malolactic fermentation, which allows the malic acid to leave the wine. This causes a decrease in the acidity level and brings about the wine's stability.

The wine is then stuck, which means the suspended particles are precipitated. The wine is then sulphited, which means protected against oxidation.

Last stage before marketing is the bottling which takes place a short time before the following harvest.

Contrary to red wine making, the white wine grapes are pressed on arriving at the cuvage.

In Burgundy, the white wine is exclusively made with white grapes, except for the Cremant of Burgundy which can sometimes contain grapes from the Black Pinot vine.

The extracted juice from the grapes is put into a tank where it will spend the night being elutriated.

Then fermentation can start wine making and will although take around ten days.

The second fermentation, the malolactic fermentation, which is carried out for the white high-class wines of Burgundy, takes place.
It is not always the case in other areas where more acid and dryer wines are made.

The last stages will be just like in red wine making which is to say sticking, filtering, joining and finally bottling.