François Dumas
François Dumas is a young winegrower who has been living in Véranne for a few years. François' estate covers around 4 ha with young vines that are not yet in production. Certified in organic farming.
There is no real logic of tillage and grassing. A plot of Saint Joseph and one of VDP are never worked but only mowed once a year. Elsewhere, the soils are tilled, and his young vines are even plowed to limit competition from grass for these young plants.
On most of the other plots, the work is intermediate. On hillsides, he works the soil with a small winch two to three times a year, and in any case does not try to avoid the grass at all costs.
Yields are around 25 hl / ha on average, but vary greatly depending on the age of the vines.
The harvest is done in boxes of 20 kg, vatting by hand, light sulphiting at this time. The vats are long (3 to 4 weeks), he leaves the work to be done for the first 3 to 4 days without intervening, then performs one or two lifting and then punching down / pumping over every other day before stopping the interventions at the end. The long vatting allows it to seek out a little bit of stalk and seed to make the wines more complex, bring them a certain tannic load and bring them freshness.
The maturing is done systematically in non-new wood (Burgundy barrels of 2 to 5 wines) so as not to mark the wines, and a slight sulphiting is carried out when setting to stabilize the wines to a minimum.
Gamay is vinified as much as possible as a whole harvest (100% in 2016), with light de-stemming if necessary. Syrah is generally 40% destemmed, except in 2018 where François has 60% destemmed
François wants to work his whites on larger containers in the future. He is currently testing a Stockinger 400 liters bought new in 2013 in order to have a virgin container of yeast and not marked by previous breeding, the idea being that it soaks up its native yeasts and its juices. .
Everything is of course vinified using indigenous yeasts.