What does wine mean to you ?

Pierre Birebent

Winemaker & consultant (Napa Valley)

As I say sometimes, grape growing is the first step of winemaking, and it is up to the winemaker to develop and express the characteristics of the fruit of a special parcel of land.

“Being a six-generation grape grower and winemaker, wine represents for

me a family tradition”

It represents one year of labor in the vineyard, dealing with mother nature, attending and caring for those vines. It is a great pleasure to receive those grapes on the crush pad, on an early September morning.The next reward is to crush those grapes, ferment and age the wine until the bottling day. Most of all it taste so good. My last tasting emotion was 2 years ago, when I was visiting my family in the southwest of France. My father in law opened his last bottle of Algerian wine that he made in the province of Oranie in 1960.This wine was made mostly from Carignan, and was not a fruit bomb, but was still alive with no flaws besides a light oxidation. It was emotional for me to taste a wine my age having been grown and produced in the same country where I was born.