Mataburro Quartet 2022

'We always look forward to the arrival of our supply of Mataburro Quartet, being relatively new to Laurent and Melissa’s cuvées. It is created from Merlot and Grenache Noir and is more of a red wine than the others, although still very light, pretty, saline and very delicious.

The wine, as we said above, is very light. You may find a slight bubble or two when you first open this wine but these will disappear fairly quickly. We should add here that this is often regarded as a fault in winemaking. This is simply because the wine competitions need things to take off marks for and they chose the presence of tiny amounts of carbon dioxide as one of the ways to do this.

They haven’t caught up with the fact that the world of winemaking has moved on, and many natural winemakers, especially those who add no sulphites at any time, often bottle the wine with a tiny amount of residual sugar remaining. Once the wine is bottled this sugar is converted to carbon dioxide by any remaining yeast in the wine. What these winemakers have achieved is a way of controlling any bacteria in the wine which is far more effective than adding sulphites. So, for us, it can hardly be called a fault if that is what the winemaker is trying to achieve.

It underwent semi-carbonic maceration and then was matured in a stainless steel tank. The fermentation was, of course, carried through with only the natural yeasts on the grapes. The alcohol level is 12.5%.

This wine has no additions, including no added sulphites (sans sulphites ajoutés on the label), and no fining or filtration.'

 - Living Wines