Château de Rhodes

The Château de Rhodes team's main objective is to seek ever higher quality, based on the improvement of cultivation methods and winemaking techniques, with a concern for respecting traditions.

The Vine, because everything comes from it… The harmonious interaction of soils, location and climate, constitutes the necessary foundation for the production of a quality product. Thanks to this exceptional terroir and the care taken in winemaking, Château de Rhodes is one of the references of the Gaillac appellation. Some of our vines are over 60 years old, the majority are between 20 and 30 years old and we continue to plant local grape varieties on the quality plots. The exposure is perfect: southwest, it allows us to obtain ideal maturities.

The vines have been cultivated organically since 2008 for the reds, and since 2010 for the whites.
The first “organic” wines are therefore those from the 2011 vintage, certified by ECOCERT SAS.

That means :
-no chemical weeding but working the soil to aerate it and bring it back to life,
-no treatment based on synthetic products, but only natural products in controlled doses: copper, sulfur, essential oils, clays, etc.
-no chemical fertilizers but natural composts, algae, which gently enrich the soil and give the vine the elements it needs when it needs them.
The yield is controlled thanks to careful work on the vines: reasoned pruning, natural grassing, careful disbudding, thoughtful leaf thinning. The harvest extends from the end of August, for the ancestral method, to the end of October for the sweet wine. It is done mechanically or manually depending on the wine produced.

The vinification of all our wines is traditional, it is done in concrete vats coated with food paint. The temperature variations are milder than in other types of vats. Since the 2011 harvest we have been letting indigenous yeasts work, those that are naturally present on the grapes and that will reveal the typicality of our terroir, we no longer work with selected yeasts. Fermentations are done by controlling temperatures.
Our wines are aged in our concrete vats for 1 to 2 years for our reds, then in bottles. They are then stored in an exceptional underground vaulted cellar, made up of two bays of Toulouse bricks measuring 40 m by 7 m. They allow the bottled wines to be stored in excellent conditions, protected from light and sudden changes in temperature. This cellar allows us to market "aged" red wines, ready for consumption!
We limit our inputs to the strict minimum: the addition of sulfur is done sparingly and is justified each time by an analysis, the finings – only when necessary – are done according to the needs of the wine. In order to respect the aromas and structure of our wines, we do, in most cases, only one filtration just before bottling. This explains the presence of a slight deposit at the bottom of certain bottles, it has no impact on the quality of the wine.

Only by appointment
Visit & Tasting at the Domaine.

Organic farming (AB)