The great wines are always produced by vines which are at least twenty years old.

The first aim of our work in the vineyard therefore is to keep the old vines in production for as long as possible. Their life expectancy, however, is not always as high as we anticipate. The Cabernet Sauvignon in particular, which is the body of our vineyard and the soul of our wine, has a very high level of mortality.

The first way of responding to this is to replace the plants one by one as they disappear; this is called interplanting. This practice, which is as old as the vineyard itself, occupies our vineyard workers for two months every year, as from the end of the winter pruning. We replace between 10,000 and 15,000 plants a year! However, it is only through this painstaking work that we can maintain the very high density of plantation of our plots (10,000 plants per hectare/2.47 acres), which in itself enables us to control the vigour of the vine plants in a balanced way.

The new plants which are phased in, however, also have limited life expectancy. In the end, it is the whole plot which loses its strength. We then have to carry out a complete replanting -which is quite a sacrifice! First, all the vines are pulled up, the sacrilege of this gesture is repeated over and again. Then the soil has to be left to rest for six years, before at last new vines can be planted. We then have to wait for these new plants to grow and mature in order to produce at last ( a generation can pass by in this time) the great wine that their terroir must start to wonder if it will ever have the chance to produce again.