Sulfite-free wine: Claude Reynaud asks in the book about the methods of making these wines
In his latest book, Claude Reynaud, son and father of winegrowers from Château de Bosc in Domazan, criticizes the processes used by large wine producers or winegrowers who sell red wines that cannot be kept, and defends the method created by his son.
It’s by setting yourself up as “trigger alert“that Claude Reynaud wrote his book (1) about organic and sulfite-free wines in which he questions their production. “I don’t like things in the world of sulfite-free winemaking, with wines now 80% produced by industry. I guess my book is controversial!” explains Gardois, a former winemaker who left the management of Château de Bosc in Domazan to his son Guillaume.
The son who more than ten years ago invented a method for producing sulphite-free red wine for laying down. “All its cuvées are now sulfite-free, and its red wines are ageable” points out Claude Reynaud, proud to see how his son, the fifth generation of his family of winegrowers, has become “one of the pioneers” in this matter. By the way, he regrets that Reynaud’s method did not attract the attention of researchers, so “that a lot of money is being spent for years on something that already exists!”.
“Unfair competition”
If Guillaume Reynaud does not reveal his process, his father recalls that it is the result of a modification “a very long winding road“winemaking”.He worked hard to get there.“.
So when he sees an increase in the number of sulfite-free wines on the shelves, he feels that there is “unfair competition of large cooperative cellars in relation to small artisan winegrowers who have adopted alternative methods: producers use technological tools that they do not have, and in addition there is no obligation to label that pasteurization has been (2)”.
Because this is where the shoe pinches Claude Reynaud: “the industry has the right to pasteurize wine like milk”. A technique that stabilizes wine by eliminating microorganisms with heat. According to this wine lover, the taste has changed, “there is standardization, I call it cocacolaization of wine!”
“All names suffer”
Claude Reynaud also points the finger “Producers who do not know the technique and put on the market wines for lying down that cannot be stored!“. And here based on the analysis, which he cites in his book. If it does not contradict the regulations, “these defects affect the image of the wine brand in general, and organic wine in particular” believes, all the more at a time when “all names suffer and wine consumption falls.”
