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Winemakers
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Château de Beck, Costières de Nîmes
Jean François Herbinger
This exciting new vineyard was purchased by Jean-Francois Herbinger, an industrialist, in November 2000. He enlisted the help of Eloï Durrbach of Domaine de Trévallon, one of France’s most talented winemakers, to advise on the restructuring of the vineyard and the cellars.
The vineyards are situated on south facing slopes near Vauvert, with varied soils, based on the last alluviums of the river Rhone, with galets (pudding stones), which store the hot daytime sunshine for release in the night. The vineyard philosophy is for rational biological protection, without the use of chemical weed killers or fertilizers. The soil is worked mechanically, and grapes are picked by hand. Most of the vines are between 20 and 30 years old, with a few Grenache and Carignan of over 50 years old.
The white varieties are Grenache, Roussanne, Viognier, Bourboulenc and Ugni Blanc, and the reds are from Syrah, Mourvèdre, Grenache, Carignan, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Cinsault. Yields are very low, between 20 and 35 hectolitres per hectare. The cellars have been modernized, with wooden fermentors for the reds, and some barrel ageing (8 months for the whites, and 12 to 14 months for the red). These are very pure wines, elegant rather than blockbusting, and the Costières de Nîmes white is one of the best white wines we have found from the south of France. |
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