Nicolas Sinoquet is the Managing Director at Château Gruaud-Larose in St.Julien in Bordeaux. He welcomed us at the estate in 2015.
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Video Text: Because we are French, we buy only French oak…The trees that we are selecting… from time to time we go into the forest, it is not usual as the people who are doing that are pretty good. We are buying wood that is about two hundred years old, meaning that they are extremely dense wood. We do have about eight suppliers and the oak is dried for about two years before making the barrel. We’ve been working with the same people for maybe almost a century. From time to time we bring in new suppliers – that is for the outside part. for the inside part we ask the barrel makers to do a very smooth toast. Toasting is the…First you you bend the wood. First you put some water on it and then you dry it. Then the toasting gives the wine a sweeter taste, a taste of vanilla, of coffee or mocha. But we are not going to far into that because then it can hide the fruit in the wine by itself. So its a balance because then it gives the roundness to your wine but you don’t want this to be over important to the wine.