Expertise

The quality dynamic

Château Fourcas Hosten

Fruit at its best

Armed with detailed vineyard maps and a plot-by-plot roadmap, the teams manage the vines with a constant quest for excellence. The many vineyard operations are carried out with precision and strict attention to detail.

Concretely, these operations include soil tillage and various vine cares throughout the growth season. Other longer-term strategies also contribute to vine vitality and fruit quality: the perfect matching of grape varieties with soil types, denser planting, the guyot mixte pruning method and manual leaf removal.

Metamorphosis

The harvest plan for every plot meets the imperative that grapes must be picked when and only when they are perfectly ripe. The teams increase the number of passes or take days off with no picking as conditions dictate.

Thorough optical sorting of the fruit as the harvest arrives in the winery, guarantees that only the best berries are selected.

The vathouse, which was designed in 2010, has a total of more than 40 small tanks (from 2,500 to 10,000 litres in capacity), made of wood, concrete and stainless steel. This arrangement enables the wine from each individual plot to receive customised care. Every tank has its own special settings in terms of temperature, frequency of pumping over, soak duration, etc.

Château Fourcas Hosten

Cellar time

In the last few years, the new focus on quality at Château Fourcas Hosten has also driven attention to barrel ageing, which lasts 12 months in French oak casks, one third of which are renewed every year. The final wine is blended during ageing, the challenge being to assert the identity of the vintage in each grape variety, while expressing the characteristics of the two distinct terroirs that make up the vineyard.

The wines are bottled at the property and stored there awaiting sale.