The aim of ageing in barrel is to enable those wines that are worthy of it to gain a harmonious ageing potential in bottle. During this period of around two years, a certain number of physicochemical transformations naturally come into play, making the wine become perfectly clear and giving it a greater stability, as well as refining its organoleptic characters.

In the specific case of the great Bordeaux growths, the barrel ageing techniques were defined at the beginning of the 18th century and little by little have been improved over the years. Their evolution is a good illustration of how our traditions, as much as our skills, have always been open to change...

Today the wine is racked into barrels at the earliest opportunity after the fermentations, around the end of October or the beginning of November. This is carried out almost always in new French oak barrels, whose aromatic finesse and tannic power are the natural match for our wines. In the first six months, the barrels are placed in a position where the bung is at the top. This allows any gas still in the wine to escape quickly and at the same time enables a slight intake of oxygen, which helps the colour to stabilize. The barrels are then turned until the bung is on the side and stay in this position until the bottling. During this time, the cellar workers top up, rack and fine the wine, at the beginning, in the first-year cellar, with its majestic architecture; then in the second-year cellar, where the wine rests peacefully underground, finding the quiet atmosphere it needs to mature.

The conditions of temperature and humidity in these two great cellars follow those of the seasons. The winter cold helps the precipitation of unstable components, therefore the stability of the wines, whereas the moderate rise in temperature in summer accelerates the chemical reactions and allows the wine to gain in both finesse and softness. The restrained beauty of these buildings, one built at the beginning of the 19th century, the other in 1982, is a wonderful symbol of the character of our wines which combine power and finesse, strength and sensual pleasure.