Château Roland La Garde & Château Sainte-Luce Bellevue - Bruno et Guillaume Martin
Château Roland La Garde & Château Sainte-Luce Bellevue is a family property of 40 hectares in the Blaye-Côtes de Bordeaux appellation in the town of St Seurin de Cursac and Blaye. Bruno and Guillaume Martin (father and son) represent the 7th and 8th generation of winegrowers in their family. Together they perpetuate the history and values of past generations on this property. One of them, and surely the most important, is to make quality wines while respecting nature and the terroirs in order to continue the work of transmission to future generations. Having had as a basis healthy land where the use of pesticides has always been limited, for example no use of chemical weedkiller, Bruno converted the whole of the two properties to Biodynamics in 2009. The Organic label was obtained in 2012 then the Demeter label in 2014 for all the wines of the two properties. Biodynamics is therefore practiced from the vine to the bottle, using typical preparations (500, 500p, 501) and herbal teas in addition to the use of Bordeaux mixture to fight against vine diseases. Tillage is light using various mechanical tools (tractor work), monitoring of the vines as closely as possible in high season for the lowest use of copper and sulfur to manage vine diseases until 'with the approach of the (mechanical) harvest. In the cellar, light crushing, natural and spontaneous fermentation with the use of starters made from our own grapes, no cold maceration or sulphiting of the grapes, all the stages of vinification take place without inputs. During the alcoholic fermentation, light stirring with a blower to moisten the marc without forcing the material. Soft pressing on vertical presses then light mixing during the malolactic fermentations. Then, depending on the cuvées, aging in amphoras, barrels or vats for several months. The wines will then return to the tank for blending, and light sulphiting adapted to each cuvée to finally have fairly low totals (generally between 15 and 35 mg/L of total SO2). Several cuvées are born with each harvest, classics and historic of the property, showing the fabulous potential of these Bordeaux terroirs. Others more modern and innovative, showing the multitude of possibilities and experiments tried in the vineyards and in the cellar.