Chateau de Rieux (Minervois)

Showing us the cool place From where we were, we had time to spend until the mid afternoon, when we had an appointment at Chateau de Rieux, in Minervois . The Minervois appellation is in the Languedoc-Roussillon region . So, we made a detour to Carcassonne, to take a look at its medieval fortifications and famous skyline . Things on the map look often easier than in the reality, so we actually had to hurry up and stayed very little in Carcassonne . Just a furtive look at the city from afar . The weather was still sunny and frisk . Rieux is the name of a village located in Minervois . This village has a church that is very unique . Built in 1150-1175, it has 7 sides, giving it a circular structure . The Minervois region , in turn , got its name from a village, Minerve, lying atop a canyon along the river Cesse .Emmanuel de Soos

Chateau de Rieux, an estate and a real chateau in the middle of Rieux, can be traced in Emmanuel de Soos's family since 4 or 5 generations, as far as 1866 . He and his wife own now only an aisle of the chateau, and their house is next to it, along with the chai and cellar . [ Chateau Rieux , Phone 33(0)4 68 78 33 66 Fax 33(0)4 68 78 37 21 chateauderieux@wanadoo.fr]
Altogether, they work on 34 hectares . Average yields are 30 hectoliter/hectare . Don't use any chemicals in the vineyard, only organic ones . Short pruning .
We will taste the wines and visit the cellar today , and see some of the vineyards tomorrow morning . We enter the chai, a big cool building built in the beginning of the 20th century . Casks, vats, including big concrete ones that are mostly unused anymore, relics of the high productivity era . One of these can contain 532 hectoliters ! We visit the attic over the chai, wich allows access over the vats . A few antics covered with dust lay in a dark corner [ see picture below ] Things on the right of the pic are "échaudeuses", and were the metal boilers used in the vineyard a century ago to scald the vineroots, to keep the diseases away .

Tools of another era...

We go back to ground level , in the chai/cellar, and Emmanuel de Soos serves us wine from casks, vats and bottles, to let us know the domaine's wines :
__1 White . Viognier 2004 [ picture of the glass. Note tha B. was lucky to have her gloves, as it was so cold...] . Nice turbid colour . From a cask . Will be labelled as "Vin de Pays d'Oc" . 7800 bottles a year . Will be bottled in a week or so . Spent 8 months in casks . Received no yeast addition . Not very aromatic nor demonstrative, but that is what he looks for : Make wine as natural as possible . What we taste here comes from a cask and will be assembled with the vat part . This Viognier was planted in 1997 .
__2 White . "Les Vendanges du Docteur Rougié" 22-08-2003 ( the exact date of the harvest, wich is the name of the wine ) . Viognier . Vin de Pays d'Oc . Very light filtration when bottling . Nose very present . Very aromatic in the mouth . Nice clear colour .Euro 7,75 a bottle .
__3 Red . "Les Vendanges du Docteur Rougié" 16-09-2003 . Cinsault . Vin de Pays d'Oc . 100% destemmed . Some punching of the cap, and some demestage ( some sort of elaborate hilling up ) . Nose very fruity . Clay-limestone soil in general . 14,5° .
__4 Red . 30-09-2003 . Grenache . 14,5° . Bottled 2 months ago . Nice feeling in the mouth . Some morello cherry . Euro 7,6 .
__5 Red . Chateau de Rieux 2002. Minervois . Syrah-Grenache . 14° . Euro 10 . Very nice . Too bad we taste it a little cold . My hands can't warm the glass any more . Aromatic complexity . Always hand harvested with manual sorting on the spot .
__6 Red . Chateau de Rieux 2003 . Minervois . Same, but 2003, from a vat . Not bottled yet . Things are a little late because of the cold temperatures . Very concentrated . 2003 is an atypical year, here too .
We leave our host to drive to our Bed & Breakfast, a nicely restored "maison de maitre" in the next village, La Redorte, also located on the D11 road . As it is next to a small supermarket, we first buy some food for the next day's lunch . It is already dark and temperature is below freezing when we ring at the B&B . Exhausted . We just leave our bags in the room and drive again to have dinner in nearby village Olonzac .

The first spot we saw, early in the morning
Early in the morning , we get back to Rieux , as Emmanuel de Soos promised to drive us both in some of his vineyard plots . First one we see , near Rieux , is named "Madrenes", with 50 years old Cinsault . As we walked among the rows [ picture ] , he explains the work . Plowed twice a year . Vine shoots crushed on the spot . Goblet, with adaptation to mechanical harvest, for this plot . Second plot we stop at is also an old Cinsault one , with view far away on the minervois hills . The region is moderately hilly, with typical mediteranean landscape . On his advice , we will drive a little north of here to Minerve , to see how the village that gave its name to this wine region looks like . It happens to be very scenic [ Picture below ], with a nice little bridge over the canyoned river . Sleepy village at this season , but with many B&B in its old narrow streets .View of the village

Comments

[Thomas Thornhill]

Would like to see picture of concrete wine vat.
Does vat have a wooden top?