Maison Ventenac, Tete en l’Air, 6 Bottle Case 75cl

Winemakers Stephanie & Olivier Ramy, a husband and wife team, are the third generation of their family to run the show at Maison Ventenac. Cabardès is a unique Languedoc appellation that requires both Atlantic and Mediterranean grape varieties. Their location in the village of Ventenac-Cabardès is famed for its limestone, chalky soils, which they say gives their wines their fresher character. The winemaking philosophy is to allow their unique terroir to shine through in the wines, presenting them as naturally as possible and raising in tuns, terra cotta urns and concrete vats to enhance their purity. They are also experimenting with vinification without sulfites but deploying non-saccharomyces yeast to avoid spoilage from the likes of brettanomyces.

This is an unoaked Chardonnay from those limestone soils the grape loves so much. So their back label pronounces, "...têtes en l'air, ils avaient oublié d'élever leur Chardonnay en barriques... Cà tombe bien, cela lui va si bien."

They 'forgot' to put their Chardonnay in barrel and it all turned out just fine. After all, the common misconception about Chardonnay is it's always oaky but this good example shows how lovely it can be unvarnished with oak.