Rouge-Bleu

Collage

Beaten egg whites

Dear wine lovers,

Our "Dentelle" Cuvée is scheduled to be bottled on March 11th, a fruit and raising moon day on the calendar moon, which gives the best conditions to bottle a wine on its fruit and freshness side.

Before this crucial step, it is important to continue clarifying this wine it without too much filtration (which kills all the natural sediments, so important in our natural wine). For that purpose, we have first divided our big 100 Hl tank into two of 50 Hl, aerating it in order to open it, take off the carbonic gas which is naturally produced during the fermentation while adding some organic white eggs. In effect, the albumin contained in the white eggs will accelerate, affine the wine and, leaving its very essential components.

Of course, these white eggs will not be part of the bottled wine since it will eventually deposit at the bottom of the tank which is not used.

This is an ancestral process which enables to respect as much as possible the wine. We will now leave it for 5 weeks and, when we return from our US trip, our wine will be ready to be bottled.

Watch all the steps of this process here.

In the meantime, Kristin and I are really looking forward to meeting you on the places we have organized events. Thanks to all of you who have already responded saying that they would come.

Cheers,

Jean-Marc Espinasse - Domaine Rouge-Bleu

PS : Our good friends and wine importers in Houston are offering a week in Provence with touring vineyards (including Domaine Rouge-Bleu), visiting typical villages or cooking with a local Chef. For more info, don't hesitate to email Tim at tms@frenchcountrywines.com on behalf of me.

US visits

Dear friends,

Kristin and I have the pleasure to announce to you that we will be visiting this February 2008 the following US towns to present our Rouge-Bleu wines and meet with our dear readers in :
Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix and Houston.

Seattle : February 12th 2008 - Meet with us either :

- From 2 to 4 PM at Abraxus Books book store located :
5711 24th Avenue NW
Seattle, WA 98107
Phone          (206) 297-6777       

- From 5 30 to 7 30 PM for a wine tasting-book signing organized by the French-American Chamber of Commerce of Pacific Northwest which is sold out now.


Portland : February 13 th 2008 - Meet us at Cork wine shop from 5 to 7 PM :
2901 NE Alberta Street
Portland, OR 97211
Phone :          (503) 281-2675       


San Francisco : February 14 th 2008 - Meet us at Palio d'Asti restaurant from 2 to 4 PM :
640 Sacramento Street
San Francisco, CA 94111
Phone          (415) 395-9800       


Los Angeles : February 15th 2008 - Meet us at Wine House wine store from noon to 4 PM :
2311 Cotner Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90064
Phone          (800) 626-9463       


Phoenix : February 16th 2008 - Meet us at Vincent's Saturday farmer's market from 9 AM to 1 PM :
3930 East Camelback Road
Phoenix, AZ 85018
Phone :          (602) 224-0225       


Houston : February 21th 2008 - Meet Jean-Marc (sorry, Kristin can't make it to this event)at Brasserie Max & Julie for a wine dinner scheduled from 7 to 9 PM :
4315 Montrose Blvd
Houston, TX 77006
Phone :          (713) 524-0070       
Tickets for this wine dinner are available through Texas our wine importer and very good friends French Country Wines. Please email Tim to secure your seats.
By the way, if you are looking for a great week in Provence with touring vineyards, visiting typical villages or cooking with a local Chef, email Tim since he is organizing a tour next April (19-26).

At last, Kristin and I will be in New York City this April 2008 (14th to 17th) and we will post you more details soon about the events we shall organize.

We do hope to have a chance to meet with you then. In the meantime, make a note in your calendar and don't hesitate to tell your francophile relatives to these events.

Apart from the events where tickets are requested, an email to let us know your visit in one of these meetings would be very much appreciated in order to manage as best as possible the logistic.

Cheers and Happy New Year,

Kristin and Jean-Marc Espinasse - Domaine Rouge-Bleu

PS : See the video of the very first bottling of our samples of Domaine Rouge-Bleu Dentelle. Sorry it is a little dark but, after all and hopefully, we did it in a cellar !

Soutirage

Thick wine lies at the end of "soutirage"

Dear wine lovers,

When a tank has completely finished its malolactic fermentation, it is time to separate the wine from its lies (lies [LEEZ] are the thick deposit resulting from both decantation and fermentation.

To do so, we will use a pump which is first hooked on the highest van level of the tank. Then, we will let the wines fall by gravity inside a case and we will pump the wine until it becomes thicker. Time then to put the lies in some small containers since it is an obligation to bring them to the distillery.

Then, the big cleaning starts inside the tank and again in the cellars since, as you can imagine, lies stain a lot.

The finest lies (the ones which come first from the tank at "soutirage") are also very good to cook with. My Aunt Marie-Françoise uses them to make one of her culinary specialties which is the Provençal "Daube" marinated with fine wine lies :

Ingredients for 4 people :
2 teaspoons of olive oil
10 garlic cloves, crushed
1 (2-pound) chuck roast, boneless, trimmed and cut into 2-inch cubes
1 1/2 teaspoons of salt
1/2 teaspoon of freshly ground black pepper
2 cups of fine red wine lies
2 cups of chopped carrots
1 1/2 cups of chopped onions
1/2 cup of beef broth
1 tablespoon of tomato paste
1 teaspoon of chopped fresh rosemary
1 teaspoon of chopped fresh thyme
A bit of ground cloves
1 (14.5-ounce) of can diced tomatoes, undrained
1 leaf of bay
3 cups of cooked pasta

Preparation
Preheat oven to 300°F.
Heat olive oil in oven over low heat. Add garlic to pan; cook for 5 minutes until soft. Remove garlic from pan and put it aside. Turn up the heat. Add beef to pan and brown it. Sprinkle beef with 1/2 teaspoon of salt and 1/4 teaspoons of pepper. Cook 5 minutes, browning on all sides. Remove beef from pan. Add wine lies to pan, and bring to a boil, scraping pan to loosen browned bits. Add garlic, beef, remaining 1 teaspoon salt, remaining 1/4 teaspoon pepper, carrot, and next 8 ingredients (through bay leaf) to pan; bring to a boil.
Cover and bake at 300° for 2 1/2 hours or until beef is tender. Take out bay leaf. Serve over pasta. Garnish with fresh thyme

If you are interested in doing this recipe and you don't have a way to get some fine wine lies, you can always use an old bottle of wine that you will reduce with flour.

Here are all my greetings for a beautiful Christmas Season and a happy New Year with, I am sure, some great wines to celebrate.

Cheers,

Jean-Marc Espinasse - Domaine Rouge-Bleu

Wine Club

Charles, one of our "Copains" who helped us so much during the harvest

Dear wine lovers,

In order to respond to the question about "how to get our wines", I am honored to offer you the opportunity to join our "Copains" Wine Society.

This offer includes the following benefits : A one day Rhone wine tour with your servitor (me), tee shirts signed by the whole family, exclusive pictures and videos of Domaine Rouge-Bleu life (which won’t be available at the regular blog), and even the possibility of opting for 6 bottles of my Uncle's Châteauneuf du Pape wines.

So, here is the offer Word or PDF document. Feel free to contact me by email or by phone (+33 6 15 10 52 01) if you need additional information. If you want to create your own "Copains" group in order to split the membership, you are welcome to do this, just indicate to me the number of people in the group so that each of them receives a tee shirt.

Not much happening nowadays at Domaine Rouge-Bleu. We still have a few leaves on the vines which gives me a good pretext for postponing pruning. In fact, I am waiting for some strong frost to start as disease can develop in the woods when you prune with mild temperatures.

I actually spend most of the time trying to find the best companies for the printing our labels (which are now finished in terms of creation - see the final version of Dentelle and Mistral), bottles, corks...
Also, I am putting together a US West Coast wine tasting / book signing tour with Kristin in order to meet with all our "Copains" around a glass of wine next February :
02/12 : Seattle
02/13 : Portland
02/14 : San Francisco
02/15 : Los Angeles
02/16 : Phoenix
I will also be in Houston for a wine dinner on 02/21 and we will of course keep you posted on all those events.

Cheers,

Jean-Marc Espinasse - Domaine Rouge-Bleu

PS : This proposal is addressed to our US readers. For other destinations, please email me and hopefully we can work this out. I will also put together an offer for France soon.

Wine tasting

One of our old Grenache vines planted "on the rocks" on a typical sunset Mistral day. These grapes participated in our Mistral "cuvée"

Dear wine lovers,

All our tanks have now finished both their fermentations (alcoholic and malolactic). The four filled tanks we have express their "terroir" identity with, of course the grape variety's influence. What is interesting here is that depending on "terroir" and with the same grape variety, the wines express themselves very differently.

What we have thought before harvest has come true. Our Carignan, harvested at low yields, gave a very smooth and fruity tank. The Grenache, if they were planted "on the rocks" or on sandy limestone soils, give either red fruits or roasted hints. And Syrah has given us its typical blackcurrant aromas. The small amount of Mourvèdre and Roussane bring complexity and freshness.

And a common point of all our tanks is that, besides good levels of alcohol, we have been able to reach high acidity levels (around 3,8) which not only permit the wines to balance alcohol and not feel it but also to insure a promising aging. That is the result of very low yields and organic farming where vines have given their best to produce vines with two major components which are sugar and acidity

Enough talk for now, let's put these words into You Tube video

And here are the details of what you have just seen :

- Domaine Rouge-Bleu "Dentelle" red 2007. This "cuvée" is mainly made from Carignan (63%) and with a Grenache blending (27%). This wine is "on the fruit side" : Fresh, smooth and elegant are the words to characterize it and it will be available in April 2008.

- Domaine Rouge-Bleu "Mistral". This special "cuvée" is mainly made from our 55-year-old Grenache (68%) with a blending of Syrah (17%), Mourvèdre (9%), Carignan (4%) and Roussane (2%). 15% of this blending is now aging in old barrels. It is powerful with complex notes, evolving from black fruits (figs, blackberries) to cacao and roasting hints. We will bottle it before the 2008 harvest in order to release it at its best for the 2008 Holiday Season.

At last, regarding our label and since no one has been largely approved (many congrats by the way to Ryan who won the poll), I have finally decided to follow my heart, listening to many comments I received. With Florent, our graphic designer, we have been able to modernize and bring out this old Carignan grape vine which represents so well our terroir and the spirit of our wines made from old vines. We are not 100% done so all comments are always welcome, we can always make it better.

Please accept all my thanks for your participation (label submission, vote) to this big brainstorming.

Cheers,

Jean-Marc Espinasse - Domaine Rouge-Bleu

Griffonnage

Scratching ("Griffonner") the soil on a beautiful fall day

Dear wine lovers,

Our current Indian summer has permitted our vines to keep on accumulating sun energy since not all the leaves haven't fallen on the ground, showing us their beautiful colors which change from each variety.

Before life stops for a few months, it is still time to stimulate life and think about the future :
- Stimulating the underground microbian life, which is one of the reasons I follow the biodaynamy concepts, can be done now by scratching the soil. This way, oxygen aerate it and permits to compost dead leaves. I also use a special preparation MT 500 (mainly made from cow ...) to ameliorate this organic decomposition.
- Replacing the dead vines by news ones. Even if the baby vine will be planted next spring, it is now time to make the future holes so that the hopefully winter rain (which we now need so much) will create water reserve for the future planted vine.

When I am done with these tasks, I will have completed a full year of vine care. I am almost impatient to start pruning just to have this great accomplishment feeling.

Cheers,

Jean-Marc Espinasse - Domaine Rouge-Bleu

Grapillons

Grapillons from Carignan before late harvest

Dear wine lovers,

I thought we were done with harvesting and pressing...until I recently realized that the sanitary state of the "grapillons" in our vines was just very interesting.

In France, there is an old tradition of picking those grapes left at harvest time, since those "grapillons" were not ready then. Grapillons are small grapes that came out of vines 2-3 weeks after the first "real" ones and that's the reason why they are not mature during regular harvest time.

In the ancient times, those grapillons were usually picked by poor people who would make their wine. For us, those grapillons harvested are now over matured and will provide sweet wine, considering the high level of sugar that they content. Yesterday, some very good friends came over to renew this tradition and share good times with us. Like for the first of our regular harvest, Mistral was blowing strong and it was great to remind our exceptional harvest conditions.

Back to our cellar, we had to crush those grapes with our feet like it was done by our ancestors and I could count with the great help of my wife's best friend, Susan , for this fun task. During the picking, we might also have disturbed a few ladybugs that came with us to inspect the cellar.

Cheers,

Jean-Marc Espinasse - Domaine Rouge-Bleu

PS : The label poll is about to give its outcome. We will surely consider carefully the results and will include some ideas to affine our label.

Assembler

Our cellar with full tanks and a few used barrels

Dear wine lovers,

Now that all the grapes have been pressed, it is time to fill the tanks at 100% their potential (note that during the winemaking, they are filled up to 80% with both grape juice and marc) since the wine can't be in contact with air.

This means that we have to make choices about which tank must be blended to the other one, having in mind that we are planning to elaborate two kinds of wines.

To help us fill the tanks, we will use smaller ones like these used barrels that will welcome our best blend for 10 months.

Our wines are now aging and the most urgent works in the cellar is almost done. That gives me time consider marketing aspects :

- We are leaving the label poll give its outcome (so it is still time to expression your opinion) and at this point I would like to thank you SO MUCH for your massive votes (about 1,800 votes so far) and for all the comments left which help a lot in the final decision.

- At last, I am working on a wine club offer for our dear readers in order to respond to all the requests we had on how to get our wines.

Cheers,

Jean-Marc Espinasse - Domaine Rouge-Bleu

Back to labels...

Dear wine lovers,

As we are almost done with pressing the grapes, I am now back to what occupied my mind before the harvest (which seems an eternity ago)...

We have received a lot a suggestions, comments and submissions, thank you so much !

Here are all the submitted labels. When you get to the label album, click on each image to see it bigger.

IMPORTANT : For those who have sent their piece of art, please make sure the label is the right one. Also, it is quite possible that I may have made a mistake or forgotten some. So please let me know if I should modify something before we do the "official" poll next Monday.

Cheers,

Jean-Marc Espinasse - Domaine Rouge-Bleu

PS : At this time, label submissions are closed

Press time

Syrah "marc" which will be pressed soon

Dear wine lovers,

When the grape juice has fermented into wine and after it has macerated long enough, it is time to separate the wine from its "marc" and press it.

First, we have to pump the wine to put it in another tank and then we have to fill the press machine with the marc, pulling it and even going inside the tank to recuperate as much as we can.

Then, the press starts and stops when the wine which drops has too much vegetal hints.

This operation takes a whole day for one tank and it is very physical. As a great reward we get lots of nice flavors but unfortunately I can't give you a sample of this through this blog...but next spring, we should have our first vintage ready to ship !

Cheers,

Jean-Marc Espinasse - Domaine Rouge-Bleu

PS : We have closed the submission for labels. Thanks for all of you who have posted and emailed with ideas. We will put online the photo album and the poll next week.