The cellars at Château du Retout were rebuilt with concrete vats in the 1960s. A new vat room was constructed in 1973 to house stainless steel vats, all of which have been temperature-controlled since 2001. In the late 1980s, another building was renovated and transformed into a barrel cellar. In 2003, a second cellar with a capacity of 320 French oak barrels was built.

We have our own bottling and labelling equipment in order to have complete control over all aspects of winemaking as well as to guarantee impeccable quality and meticulous presentation. We are also attentive to hygiene at all stages of production, from harvest to bottling.

The grapes are harvested both manually and mechanically. This is because great strides have been made with mechanical harvesters over the past few years. These now enable the fruit to be picked gently and eliminate over 95% of matter other than grapes.

Once they arrive at the cellar, the grapes are carefully sorted by hand so that only the ripest, healthiest ones go into the fermentation vats.

For the past ten years, new methods have been introduced to make the most of the wine's intrinsic fruitiness. These include winemaking at low temperatures (between 5 and 28°C) in an oxygen-free environment. We seek to gently extract the best the grapes have to offer at the begining of alcoholic fermentation.

Fermentation and maceration last between 3 and 5 weeks.

The wine is aged in French oak barrels for 12 months. About 28% of these are new each year. In order to retain maximum fruitiness, we do not rack at all during this 12-month period. The barrels are regularly topped up so they do not let air in.

At the end of ageing, the barrels are rinsed, descaled with hot water (80°C) and sterilized to make them ready for the next year's vintage.

We use our own bottling equipment (the wine is all estate-bottled). We also pay special attention to hygiene, washing this equipment thoroughly and doing everything in our power to avoid oxidation.

The quality of the corks we use is essential. That is why we insist that our suppliers respect a set of strict specifications. This keeps the risk of "corked" bottles to an absolute minimum.

After bottling, we store the wine in steel box pallets in our temperature-controlled cellars. The bottles are washed before capsules are put on, and the wine is labelled and put into either cartons or wooden cases just before shipment.