Two months picking, two weeks to one month fermenting… the wine needs then about two years to « rest ».
This long period of maturing – 22 months – is essential for powerful aromas to become finer and more complex.
Wines from château de Myrat are matured in French oak barrels – a third new each year. Slight wooden flavours help the fruit flavours and spicy taste coming from botrytis to developp.
To allow micro-oxygenation of the wine, the hole of the barrel is not hermetically closed: a glass bound is just put in it but not fixed.
Each barrel is topped up every 10-15 days because wood is « drinking », wine is evaporating, we call the missing part the « angels’ share ».
A racking is made every quarter in order to remove sediments in the bottom of the barrel – it is the same operation we are doing when decanting a wine.
Barrels are tasted and analyzed each month. Similar days of picking are progressively blended, to elaborate at the end of the maturing stage one single wine of château de Myrat classified great growth.
