Winegrowers’ Portraits La Londe-les-Maures
Château du Galoupet
A great works policy
in the name of quality
With a fantastic view over the Mediterranean, with the Levant, Port Crau and Porquerolles islands in the background, Château du Galoupet, in the Côtes de Provence Cru Classé appellation, settled on the hill, its well-arranged vineyard all in one piece, offer to the visitor a post card panorama. Since the 70s, this Château belongs to Anglo-Indian Schivdasani family who does not stop investing. After replanting the vineyard, the reorganization of the cellar, they now enlarge the reception buildings to answer the success of their wines.
The historical Château du Galoupet appears on the first viticultural map of France made by order of King Louis XIV. It now is one of the most important domains of the Côtes de Provence appellation. The estate spreads over 160 ha including hills covered with scrubland and holm oaks where walking paths have been created to make a tour of the 72-hectare vineyard, planted on sloping hillsides, facing east-west and north-south. The sheltered and slightly windy micro-climate of the place is ideal for the farming of a sound vineyard. Classed in 1955, Château du Galoupet is acquired in 1970 by the Schivdasani family who restructures the vineyard, renews the plots of land and installs a drip irrigation on 55 ha. The planted grape varieties include Grenache, Mourvèdre, Cinsault, Shiraz, Tibouren, Rolle, Sémillon, Chardonnay, Cabernet, Calladoc and Carignan, and allows to give subtlety to the blends.
This wine estate presents a great soil diversity, a clayey-calcareous terroir at the foot of the Chateau and schistose on the hill. Technical manager Gilles Bascle, oenologist, sums up the treatments allocated to this vineyard: “To obtain quality, we operate green harvest in June-July, when the vegetation is sturdy, on all the domain which is maintained in integrated farming. All year round, the work of the soils is important, the vines are on average 25 years old, the old vines reach half a century and are reserved for red wines.
We harvest the rosé and white grapes at night when it is cool. The grape is sorted out and sent to the pneumatic press with nitrogen to avoid the oxidation through a harvest exchanger which cools it at 8°. We do not use bisulphite on the grape to practise a maceration without extraction of colouring pigments out of the berry skins so that our rosé gains complexity. The vinification of all the Domain is done by plot and using gravity. The Chateau has an important vathouse with volumes going from 7 to 225 hectos and we work with gravity to avoid the mechanical movements, by respect for the grape and for the wine during the vinification. The bottling is also made by gravity under nitrogen, still to avoid oxidation. The by-plot vinification is used for the red and rosé wines.”Red, white and rosé wines are crafted here with a beautiful raw material, a very precise wine making. They are the fruit of the work of a tightly-welded and winning team, consisting of the trio: Fernand Luciani, general manager; Patricia Poirié, deputy general manager; and Gilles Bascle, technical manager. All the wines of the Chateau have won awards. But at all times, it is the rosé which has built the fame of this property. 70% of the production of Château du Galoupet, and three cuvées out of the five of the range, are Provence Rosés! The best-seller (300,000 bottles a year) is Château du Galoupet Rosé Cru Classé, a blend crafted like a perfume with a succession of scents, easy to drink at the aperitif, where Grenache and Cinsault, main varieties, bring structure and fruitiness, and where Shiraz, Tibouren and Mourvèdre give a sur-plus of complexity. More confidential (6,000 bottles a year), older (it is being produced since thirty years), the rosé Tibur, developed with 90% Tibouren and 10% Grenache, aged and stirred in tanks on fine lees during a year, is atypical. Presented in a black bottle which hides its colour, with a screw stopper, sold by boxes of 4 bottles, it may look disconcerting at first sight. When tasted, it reveals to be a wine of gastronomy that seduces restaurant owners as much as connoisseurs.
Finally, surprise, surprise, Exception, this effervescent Provence rosé, was crafted for the first time in 2009. It is vinified according to the traditional Champagne method, with a blend in equal parts of early harvested Rolle and Tibouren, aged like a white wine, riddled by hand on shaking racks, disgorged at the Domain. This wine ages on the laths for 14 months in a buried cellar (a specificity of the Domain) to obtain the delicacy of the bubbles and its price at the propertyios close to Champagne. All these very elegant wines really deserve to be tasted at the Domain, not too far from the plots of land. They exude the environment classified as natural reserve, broom blossom, mimosa, eucalyptus leaves. They have indescribable scents of scrubland, flavours of freshly picked grape, but also lemon and orange trees planted on the Domain evolving towards the white blossom of arbutus, in brief, a beautiful aromatic complexity. The Domain opens up to wine tourism and builds a shop of 200 sq.m. for spring 2014. And enlarges the reception hall and the adjacent terrace to give them a surface area of 700 sq.m. and a reception capacity of 500 persons in 2015. A new address to receive in the South… to remind!Marie-Caroline Bourrellis
Gilles Bascle et Patricia Poirié
Château du Galoupet
Saint Nicolas
83250 La Londe-les-Maures France
Tél. : +33 (0) 4 94 66 40 07 www.galoupet.com
