Technical director Pierre Perrin’s family winery pushes ahead with innovation, while keeping tradition at its heart. In this interview, he also reveals the newfangled methods they have embraced.

Pierre Perrin stole headlines in 2013 as the winemaker who created the award-winning Chateau Miraval Rosé 2012 for Hollywood’s Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. But Perrin and his family have been stealing the hearts of wine connoisseurs for generations.

Château de Beaucastel, the Perrin family’s most upmarket range of wines, distributed here exclusively by Taste of Tradition (tel: 6299 9300), delivers its distinct complexity by preserving what it knows best: terroir and tradition. On 100ha of its 130ha vineyard in the southern Rhône region of France, the family continues to graft all 13 of the original grape varietals authorised within the Châteauneuf-du-Pape appellation, even after their peers moved on to the more productive Grenache following the crippling infestation of the root aphid phylloxera mid to late 19th century.

In 1950, Perrin’s grandfather Jacques explored farming grapes organically and then biodynamic agriculture in 1974, both considered progressive for their time, to protect the natural qualities of the land. The vineyard was officially certified as organic in 2000. This same drive to push ahead of the crowd through innovation is also seen in Pierre, who elaborates on how the winery is moving with the times.

How is Château de Beaucastel keeping up with the times?
We work to modernise our winery and its techniques every day, while simultaneously ensuring our loyalty to our traditions. One way we are updating our business is using our own yeast instead of commercial yeast. And that means we get to choose the best one for our wines.

What are the benefits of this method?
The best-quality yeast will give our wines a lot of flavour. It will ensure a good fermentation process and allow us to obtain a wine that has less alcohol content, because the yeast will require more sugar to be added as compared to the commercial type. This idea of a lower alcohol level is especially important because I’ve noticed that wine drinkers these days are looking for wines with more elegance, more finesse, less structure and less alcohol. In this case, white and rosé wines have become more popular.

After maturation and bottling, Beaucastel cellars its wines for another year. Why so?
Maturing the wine this way is important because it helps our wines achieve the balance we want. We use a very dark bottle, which we created in 1996, as it helps to conserve the flavour of the wines. We also designed it to fit a 54mm cork instead of a 49mm one. As the only other feature besides the bottle that comes in contact with the wine, the quality and size of the cork is crucial in helping us to maintain the quality of our wines.

How does the winery meet growing demand?
We are strict with the allocation of our wines in the sense that our clients get a fixed amount of stock each time. We are even stricter with the grapes we use for our wines. We select the best grapes for our Beaucastel blend and only grapes grown and picked at Châteauneuf-du-Pape can be used. The grapes that don’t meet that specific level of quality we want for Beaucastel may be used for our Famille Perrin Châteauneuf-du-Pape Les Sinards wines, our other brand wines and/or sold off to another winemaker.

What is a big challenge for you now?
One of the current challenges for me regarding my family business is to be able to talk about and think for our “haute couture” wines like Beaucastel and our “pret-a-porter” wines like La Vieille Ferme at the same time, with the same passion and the energy. Juggling two different tiers of wines at a time is quite tough, but that’s the way I like it. I would also like to boost the image of our tiny appellation Châteauneuf-du-Pape. We are fighting against bigger players like Bordeaux and Burgundy. However, I believe we have our terroir to differentiate us. Châteauneuf-du-Pape is unique; it is a little piece of paradise within the Provence region.