Winery Clos de Trias

Adress: Roque Alric 84330 LE BARROUX Ventoux
Country: France
internet: http://www.closdetrias.com/
Wine district: Vallée du Rhône
wines

Even Bakke spent his childhood bugging his chef of a mother to teach him about cooking, while an engineer father shaped his ever questioning and methodical mind. Wine wasn’t in his Norwegian origins though, but if you meet him, there will be no doubt in your mind it was in his providence. 

Even discovered wine while working his way through college as a sommelier. From these days, he kept a taste-based and worldly approach to winemaking. The interest grew so much he moved to California and took the first job that was handed to him…that was the bottling line. 14 years went by, learning alongside great mentors, and being winemaker for Landmark vineyards and Matanzas Creek, enjoying what most of us would call success.

Yet his European origins, his Champenoise wife, his desire to make his own wine, and his strong yearning for a culture of Terroir pulled him to experience what most of us would call…an adventure… to be sober, to say the least.  In 2005, Even and his young family moved to Southern France, and after 2 years of intense searching, they found their special spot. 

Not a flowery dream though. The appellation (Ventoux) is dominated by Cooperatives selling wines at 2 Euros a bottle. The administration is a nightmare. The buildings need constant repair. The equipment is as old and basic as the toys he played with in California were expensive and high-tech. And they had a shoestring budget.

But a special spot indeed: In the Southern Rhone; the Northern Provence. On the foothills of white-caped Mt Ventoux, At 350 meters above sea level. On Triassic soils. 25 hectares of old vine Grenache with a bit of Syrah, Cinsault, Carignan. In a climate of extremes, with snowy winters, sunny Provencal summers, and the powerful Mistral. In the most beautiful, rugged, intense site, where plants smell strongly and sources are a gift. Nearby the ancient town of Le Barroux with its medieval castle and old tile roofs. 

The Bakkes work hand in hand and step by step. They are converting their vineyards to organics, with a strong inspiration from Rudolf Steiner, Pfeiffer and Fukuoka. Following the biodynamic calendar, they treat with plants, work with rock powders, leave soil un-tilled with natural cover crop, prune late and try to enhance the vitality of their ecosystem as a whole. Their approach isn’t just ecological. It is spiritual and guided by the research for the expression of Terroir. Picking is done in the mornings, by the hands of friends and family, and all is hand-sorted in the afternoon.  Most of the time, the grapes are destemed.

In the cellar, Even’s work is light-handed. He uses indigenous yeasts, bare-minimum sulfur, trusts the grapes to adapt to their own ferment temperature,  and likes to give them air early on. After 3 harvests offering very different possibilities, it can be said that he uses no recipes. He just tries to express the best of Grenache in each specific vintage. Fermentations have gone from a week to 13 months. Maceration will go from 7 to 47 days. About 15% of the wines are aged in 600 & 700 liters barrels, while concrete and enameled tanks host the rest. Experiences are always happening, guided by intuition and old winemaking books, from carbonic maceration of the old Carignans to leaving the grapes for 2 days in the bin in the cold room before processing.

The wines of Clos de Trias  are clear, alive and conversational. They are lush with a backbone, intense with style, rich with freshness.