Winemaking, for me, has always been a series of choices. What to select, what to preserve, and what to leave behind. With the Red, that choice was Tempranillo, from Spain. For the White, it is Chardonnay, from France. The grape and the country changed. The question we asked ourselves did not.
Why Chardonnay? Because it performs.
Its naturally crisp acidity and fine mineral backbone hold their shape through alcohol removal. That is not a small thing. Alcohol carries weight and warmth in a wine, and once it is gone, something else has to carry the wine’s structure instead. In a red like Tempranillo, that job falls to tannin. In a white, it falls to acidity. Chardonnay’s acidity, done right, does that job as well as any grape we know.
Its capacity to carry texture matters too. Partial malolactic fermentation and time in French oak give the wine fullness and length through the mid-palate, so it does not depend on alcohol to feel present in the mouth. The oak also brings subtle layers of flavour, adding vinosity and complexity alongside that texture. Together, these qualities give the wine depth and help keep an alcohol-removed white from tasting thin.
Then there is the site. We selected fruit from cooler, higher-altitude vineyard sites in Southwest France, where Atlantic and Pyrenean influences slow ripening and concentrate flavour while preserving the acidity the wine needs to carry through to its finish. It is the same logic we applied in Spain: find the place where the grape is already fighting for balance, because that fight is what gives a wine its backbone.
From there, the process is the one we already trust. Low-temperature vacuum distillation, the gentlest method we have found for removing alcohol without stripping what makes a wine a wine. An aroma recovery system that captures the delicate aromatics before distillation and reintegrates them afterward, so nothing is lost that does not have to be.
The result is the same discipline, applied to a different grape. Bright, textured, and unmistakably wine. Not an imitation of Chardonnay. Another expression of it.
Not defined by what was removed. Defined by what remains.
— Duncan Shouler