Domaine Oak Hill - Louise Macdonald & Sylvain Lalonde
At Domaine Oak Hill, we want to know what the Nordic vine says about our terroir, what it wants to produce from the fermentation of its grape juice on its own yeasts, and then we want to taste how it all looks in our glass… after having taken care of it properly, in the field and in the cellar.
How does the vine want to grow in our soil? How does she prefer to be pruned to find her balance growing here, to be able to produce the right number of leaves needed to nourish and ripen her grapes perfectly? It is the vine that tells us, we can only listen to it and learn from the consequences of our choices as humble apprentice winegrowers, the good and the bad.
With this in mind, we have decided to be organic and more than organic, and to have it recognized, in order to be as transparent as possible to our customers who consume our wine. We have also been taking a biodynamic approach since last year, to be recognized for our good practices in this area. The fact of asking for official certification to guarantee healthy and clean food is controversial in the community, but with the multitude of choices available to consumers, we believe that it is a guarantee of the seriousness of our approach and of respect for them. .
Our actions in the cellar? Not much, except to have clean containers, to be kind to the fruit, to observe, to smell (especially to smell!), To taste, to control the temperature, to measure certain indicators . We will not add anything (apart from a minimum of sulfur to protect), except a little hope, prayer and crossed fingers, because a wine called “natural” is not always “good” to taste and even less. to hit the whole bottle. Our goal at Domaine Oak Hill is to make a straight wine that reflects its grape variety and its terroir, a wine that is good, interesting, unpredictable, even surprising, but which has enough structure to stand at least for as long as possible. bottle, and ideally several months or even a few years later.