Domaine La Tasque in the UK for Christmas

Posted by Juliet Bruce Jones on 17 Nov 2019 in News | 0 comments

La Tasque wines for Christmas

Friends in the UK, pre-order Domaine La Tasque wines now, for delivery to your door in time for Christmas.

Choose from our sumptuous, medal-winning Syrah, our rugged but strangely smooth Carignan or the newly released Carignan-Grenache 2017, an exuberantly fruity red which is liquid proof of  triumph over adversity. Click here for details.

Mixed cases also available.

But hurry! Orders need to be finalised by 23 November so pre-order now.

Officially organic

Posted by Juliet Bruce Jones on 13 May 2019 in News | 0 comments

Going for organic certification

Carignan Vineyard

We have been farming our vineyards organically since the we started in 2012. We have decided to make that official and have signed up with Ecocert, an organisation  that requires compliance with their standards for organic certification.  The process takes three years so we should be officially organic, and be able to put that cute little green leaf logo on our bottles from 2022.

What took us so long?

There are several reasons why we didn’t do this right from the beginning. Firstly the fee for certification, yet another cost for a small business. Secondly, who needs more paperwork? Thirdly, and more fundamentally, is the recognition that there are different ways of growing grapes and respecting the environment and following a set of criteria to get organic certification is just one of them. However, many customers have asked whether we are organic and an official certification or logo is much easier for consumers to understand that our ‘de facto organic’ explanation.

What do we put on our vineyards?

Sheep grazing in our Carignan vineyard

Organic viticulture means using no chemical fungicides, insecticides or weedkillers. Compost and fertilisers must be natural ie from plants or animals/animal waste. We do use sprays in our vineyards to stop the vines and grapes getting fungal diseases or eaten by insects (particularly the lava of the grape vine moth) but in organic farming these sprays come from a natural as opposed to a synthetic source. Here is a list of what we put on our vineyards in the last 5 years and why. In approximate order of the frequency of application. All are certified organic products.

• sulphur (fungal disease – powdery mildew)
• extract of orange (fungal diseases, so use less copper and sulphur)
• copper (fungal disease – downy mildew)
• Compost – plant or cow dung
• organic fertilizer, made from bird or pig poo. And sheep poo! (see photo)
• Pheromone pods (from 2019), to sexually confuse grape vine moth males and so replace insecticides such as ..
• Bacillus Thuringiensis, a naturally occurring bacterium (grape vine moth)
• Spinosad insecticide, a bacterium originally discovered in sugar cane (grape vine moth)
• Pyrethrins, an insecticide extracted from chrysanthemums. By law, grape growers have to use insecticide to reduce populations of cicadelle, the leaf hopper that spreads the disease flavescence dorée.

Organics in the winery

We are pretty non-interventionist in our winemaking so adhering to organic rules in the winery (eg lower sulphur) shouldn’t be a problem. A topic for another post!

When to harvest?

Posted by Juliet Bruce Jones on 3 Sep 2018 in News | 0 comments

The decision when to harvest the grapes is vitally important. The links to the videos below explain how to assess grape ripeness. It’s not just about sugar levels, but flavour and tannin ripeness too. And don’t forget to look at the colour of the pips!

Bottling 2016 La Tasque

Posted by Juliet Bruce Jones on 29 Mar 2018 in News | 0 comments

Bottling 2016 Syrah and Carignan

We bottled our 2016 Syrah and 2016 Carignan yesterday, 2500 bottles in all. It was a small but perfectly formed vintage – our best yet we think. It needs more time to mature in bottle so it won’t be released until next year. In the meantime, here are some photos of bottling, using a high tech bottling line from the back of a lorry.

Making up boxes beforehand

Merve and Mathilda with Syrah

A shady Simon with Carignan

Packing Syrah 2016

Pallet of 2016 Syrah

Trish and Merve packing 2016 Carignan

Et Voila! La Tasque Carignan

2017 – Frost and fruit (or not)

Posted by Juliet Bruce Jones on 22 Jun 2017 in News | 0 comments

2017  in the vineyard – highs and lows

The morning of the 18th April was when the big frost hit the Languedoc. Not all vineyards were affected – it depended on topography but unfortunately our vineyards were badly hit. Within a couple of hours our vines had gone from looking lovely and green and healthy to this. Approximately 80% of Syrah vines were frosted. 60% of the Carignan.

Carignan before the frost

Carignan after the frost

Pretty depressing, I can tell you.

But nature is amazing. Within a month, the secondary buds had started to burst and now the vineyards are green and healthy with lots of leaves. The only problem is that often these secondary buds are not fruitful. In the Carignan, the bottom half of the vineyard, which was completely frosted, has no grapes. Lots of leaves but literally NO grapes. The top section of  the Carignan is, mercifully, a different story. There was much less damage and there are some promising bunches of grapes forming.

Carignan grapes – June

Syrah – grapes from primary and secondary buds on the same vine

The Syrah presents more of a challenge. More of the secondary buds are fruitful but they are approximately 5 weeks behind the fruit formed on the primary buds. And often on the same vine! The photo below illustrates this very clearly. The secondary fruit is only just flowering. This means that the harvest will have to be staggered as the grapes will have be ripe at different times. Selection will be key.

One thing is sure. 2017 will be a very small vintage.

Compost

Posted by Juliet Bruce Jones on 24 Mar 2017 in News | 0 comments

Composting the vineyards

30 tonnes of organic compost was delivered at the beginning of this year. Working out how to distribute it onto the vineyards when we don’t own any equipment to do so took some working out, but we got there in the end.

So here is the organic compost, made of vegetable and plant matter.  It is well composted and smells wonderful – sort of mushroomy with  pine and forest floor.

We borrowed a tip up trailer that was narrow enough to fit between the vines in the Carignan vineyard and hired a bobcat to load it.

We composted every second row. Here is the trailer about to start to discharge its load in the Carignan vineyard.And here is the compost, evenly spread in the vineyard.

See ‘compost – the movie’ for more information on our facebook page!