Welcoming the future… one plot after another in biodynamics

If the grape harvest represents a high point for the sixteen Gérard Bertrand vineyards and estates, this period expresses above all the result of a whole year of care and support for the plots cultivated using biodynamic methods. 

"There is no great wine without great grapes. This is the house's trademark. To have great grapes, you need this alchemy that takes into account the notion of terroir," explains Gilles de Baudus, who since 2002 has managed, coordinated and implemented the conversion of the Gérard Bertrand estates to biodynamics, alongside the eponymous winemaker. Biodynamics, by taking into account the three essential factors of the vintage, the soil and human intervention, redefines the foundations of viticulture: "The work of the biodynamicist is to play with homeopathic preparations at particular times to try to give an impulse to the ecosystem that allows us to channel the life process surrounding the life of the soil, the development of the plant and the maturity of the grape towards what seems balanced and harmonious to us. From there, we just have to accompany the living process in a different conception of the conventional system (command, direct and submit). Here, we try to magnify and accompany. We don't make wine in the cellar."

The work is done as much in the vineyard as in the cellar

A modus operandi confirmed by Gérard Planas, Director of the Estates, who reaffirms the powerful and inseparable link between the excellent health of the vineyard in 2021 and "the vigilance and daily attention to accompany each vine until the harvest by surveying each plot" . A natural accompaniment to stimulate the vineyard's natural defenses against climatic aggressions, such as water shortages, or parasites. "The applications of biodynamic preparations followed one another to the rhythm of the seasons and planetary alignments: Maria Thun manure compost in the fall, Horn manure in the spring and Horn silica during the vine's plant growth phases" .

Biodynamics at the service of nature

The monitoring of life, the care and the benevolent surveillance of each plot naturally lead to the harvest season, during which the winegrowers walk their estates every day in search of the optimum maturation of the grapes, between quantity of sugar and acidity, between sugar and maturity of the tannins, keeping in mind the wine they wish to produce. Gilles de Baudus insists on this point: "Each vintage is unique, we are not going to try to reproduce the previous vintage. Each wine has a spirit, which takes into account both the terroir and the vintage". From one terroir to another, bunch after bunch, hand in hand to create wines of excellence .