The vineyard work is finished; the Domaine Pinson prepares its grape harvest carefully, because all must be implemented so that the grapes arrive at the pressing room under the best conditions. Before this starts, each vineyard will have been visited, and samples taken away to measure the potential alcohol as well as the level of acidity. The harvest will take place as soon as the maturity of the grapes is at its optimum.
With the Domaine PINSON, all of the harvest is carried out manually. For this, we employ approximately 50 people for the duration of the harvest, which varies from 8 to 10 days depending on the vintage. The grapes are thus brought whole to our pressing room, where we practice an enzyme addition, necessary for the first juice clarification. The grapes are immediately pressed using pneumatic presses, which are the most advanced machines to extract the best juices. Indeed the best juice comes from a soft press (from 200 G to 2 kg). This practice preserves the quality of the musts, and avoids the herbaceous tastes, which one can obtain with the traditional presses.

After the pressing is completed, we practice the first stage of wine making which consists of separating the clear juices from the first lees ( static settling ). This operation happens naturally, because the lees settle for 12-18 hours after the initial pressing and fall to the bottom of the tank.

We then systematically add yeast addition to all of our musts, in order to start the alcoholic fermentation quickly. During this procedure, a control is carried out each morning and evening on each tank, to supervise the evolution of the fermentation and the temperature. If the temperature increases in an excessive way, we cool the tanks with a special water-cooling system.

Once the alcoholic fermentation is completed, the second natural fermentation is carried out : the malolactic fermentation, which consists of transforming the " hard " acids (malic acid) into more " soft " acids (lactic acid). For this operation, it is necessary to maintain the temperature of the wine between 18°C and 20°C. This fermentation is usually completed by the end of January / beginning of February. With both fermentations now completed the first rackings are started. Our Premier Crus and Grands Crus wines are then matured in oak barrels, on fine lees, for 6 months, whereas our Chablis " Village " remains in tank. Our Chablis "Village" is then bottled in May/June. After the Premier and Grand Crus wines have matured (August), they are racked, and then fined, in order to perfect the clarification before their filtration and their bottling (September).

The year of work and monitoring of the wines is now finished, the marketing can start.

The wines are left a minimum of two months to settle in the bottles, time necessary for the wine to be accustomed to its new type of conditioning: the bottle, the half-bottle, the magnum, as well as various existing capacities of the style Jeroboam, Mathusalem...

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