Clos Saouma Côtes-du-Rhône Villages Blanc Inopia

All the fruit is from their own vineyards around the winery in Orange. Mostly Grenache Blanc with Roussanne, Marsanne, Bourboulenc and Clairette. Pressed hard in a mechanical press to make the wine a friend of oxygen early this is fermented naturally (No SO2 or yeast added) in Cement eggs and 500 litre barrels. On full lees for 16 months minimum, no racking or sulphur.

Notes from Mounir, ‘We call the INOPIA , in latin “made from nothing” as land was empty and all is done very simply without a lot of material.
INOPIA is a terroir in Orange (remember Orange is one of the five villages producing Châteauneuf-du-Pape) , clay soil (1 m) with a lot of little river stones called “Grès” (8 m deep) so it has a nice humidity (clay) for the dry south climate and a lot of mineral elements from the stone. The land was empty abandoned when we bought it in 2011, we saw the great potential there and we decided to plant 11 varietals (teasing Châteauneuf with their 13 varietals), high density (4700 plants per hectare, normally it’s 3500 ), soil is very poor and we decided not to bring any food to the roots, objective quality low yield and not quantity, production in 2013 (first vintage) and 2014 is less than 2000 litres per hectare (normally it’s 4400 litres).
We do all the vineyard work by hand, minimum acts, a lot of respect for nature, as we do in Châteauneuf du Pape, we pick by hand. The white is pressed HARD (mechanical press, old Vaslin Press from 1974 ) whole clusters and sent to Barrels 500 litres and cement eggs 1600 litres for 16 months too. White Mostly Grenache Blanc, a bit of each Roussanne, Marsanne, Bourboulenc and Clairette.’