LES VINS A L'ANCIENNE

At Domaine du Fontenay, the policy is to add nothing. Initially, we asked ourselves what would happen if we stopped adding the standard cocktail of various additives. Well,  nothing went wrong and the wine even tasted a lot better.

The only additive that we use is sulphur. This has to be used by all wine makers to preserve the wine during the time it is stored in the vats prior to bottling. We use very moderate amounts of sulphur, which we adjust with very frequent analysis at a wine lab. A few cranks pretend that it is possible to make, preserve and bottle wine without sulphur. It is just possible that if you taste these wines at the property within a couple of months after the harvest and drawn freshly from the tank they might taste OK.  Later on and once bottled and shipped they are usually oxydised and show multiple deviances. These are for suckers, sorry, customers, who will believe anything!

Why we do not use additives: