Work in the vineyard

Wine growing, and agriculture in general, can use either a semi-industrial system giving beautiful flawless but tasteless fruits or a more authentic system respectful of our terroir and giving tastier fruits. In this spirit, we decided to turn to organic culture and since 1997, were are certified “Qualité France”. Our purpose is not to get the “organic” label but to produce high-quality grapes and wines that will reflect best the properties of the soils where it grows and the value of the vintage elaborated each year.

At Jo Pithon’s, we do not work with chemicals (herbicides, fertilisers and other treatments). To treat mildew, we only use Bordeaux mixture (a fungicide) and against oidium and erinose, we use sulphur. Working the soils and breaking the roots is essential to get the roots to go deep in the soil instead of staying of the surface and being fed with fertilisers as it is done in chemical growing methods.

Organic culture also implies to take great care of the vines. The winter is mainly dedicated to pruning and preferably severe pruning (two 4-bud spurs). From May, several tasks are undertaken manually: bud pruning and thinning out, thinning of bunches in July (green harvesting) and leaf stripping in July and September. By the end of September, our aim is to have, on each vine-stock, 8 to 10 well-spaced and sun-exposed golden bunches.

For dry wines, the grape picking can start as early as the end of September. These 8 to 10 bunches per vine-stock will render approximately 40 hectolitres of wine between 12.5 and 13.5°. We handharvest selectively in two stages in order to pick only well ripen grapes.

Sweet and syrupy wines are handharvested selectively in 3 to 5 stages in order to pick only noble-rotten grapes (sorting out the noble-rotten grapes of each bunch). The point of this process is not to go “sugar hunting” but to get the flavours and tastes of botrytis. That’s the secret of syrupy wines!

Work in the cellar

In France, chaptalization (the process of adding beet or cane sugar) is authorised, even for syrupy wines (+2.5° in Anjou). In our opinion, it is a way of cheating over the concentration of the wine. But at Jo Pithon’s, we want only “natural” authentic wines. That is why we do not chaptize our wines nor add yeast or enzyme, which is quite exceptional in this area of France. We use only natural yeast (already in the grapes) for our wine fermentation. The fermentation process will go slowly and might last until the following spring.

All of our wines age in Burgundy barrels (medium heat) for 12 to 24 months, long enough for nature to do its work and bring our wines to their full capabilities. For bottling our sweet and syrupy wines, we use a sterile filtration technique which reduces the quantity of germs in the wine and allows us to use less sulphur.

Since 2006, for the wine-making process, we have been using conical oak casks assembled with barrels. This enabled us to produce subtler and fresher wines.