Our Wine
house
OUR WINE HOUSE
At Le Charles V, wine maturation is associated with welcoming and sharing.
Our passion for Burgundy and its grape varieties has led us to offer you exceptional wines.
After many years of selecting high quality wines, we took the step to start ageing wines ourselves.
The first year, we started with 3 barrels. In the 2nd year we grew to 15 pieces.
Today, in 2023, we are going to progressively increase this proportion to reach 95% of wines aged by us.
Our passion and our enthusiasm as well as our rigor and our precision, are as many guarantees of quality and of assets for the success of this new adventure.
We have chosen to limit ourselves in the long term to about fifty pieces for about thirty different appellations per year.
You will therefore never find more than 600 bottles of these Charles V wines throughout the world per appellation and vintage!
What if we took the time?
Because we have winegrower friends who do a remarkable job every day in the vineyard as well as during the wine-making process.
Because for them every minute counts and they can’t be everywhere, especially at harvest time.
Because they trust us and give us a small part of what they do best.
We decided at Le Charles V to take our time.
To take the time to mature all these great wines in the best possible conditions in order to magnify, to sublimate their work, to aim for excellence by bringing them gentleness, patience and precision and by surrounding ourselves with the best advisors who share our vision of quality.
To take the time to talk with you, to exchange, to taste and to build.
Because we want Burgundy in general and the Charles V in particular to be a land of welcome and sharing.
Raised in new barrels and one-wine barrels
Our aim is to offer you truly exceptional wines by means of high quality sourcing from renowned wine makers a wine ageing process carried out in optimal conditions in an air-conditioned vat room with controlled hygrometry.
We have chosen to work exclusively with new barrels and and one-wine barrels which all come from the Tonnellerie artisanale de Beaune Tremeaux.
Each barrel, crafted by coopers trained by a Meilleur Ouvrier de France, is made of the finest quality French fine grain oak, matured in the open air in chimney for months.
Why have we chosen to work with new barrels and one-wine barrels?
One might think that new barrels will dry out the wine, that the woodiness will be exacerbated.
In fact, it is the opposite: the tannins contained in the wood of the barrel will marry those of the wine and from this happy marriage new tannins, more supple and stable will emerge. However, the tannins in the cask become less intense with each vintage.
An old barrel will therefore only fulfill this function to a very limited extent.
In addition to this phenomenon, the optimal porosity of the new wood allows the micro-oxygenation of the wine. This managed contact with the air brings fatness and complexity to the wine.
And the older a barrel gets, the less it fulfills this role.
Of course, one vintage is not the same as another, hence the importance of choosing the toasting in consultation with the cooperage we work with, as it is the toasting that creates the aromas of the wood, aromas that will be transmitted to the wine during ageing
What if we thought about future generations?
Do you dream of keeping certain wines for a long time and sharing them with your friends or your descendants in 10, 15 or 20 years?
Then, if you are able to not empty that 220 liter (*) glass straight away, the Win Globe is for you.
Thanks to the Wine Globe, your bottles will stay young (almost) forever.
Do you dream of keeping certain wines for a long time and sharing them with your friends or your descendants in 10, 15 or 20 years?
Then, if you are able to not empty that 220 liter (*) glass straight away, the Win Globe is for you.
Thanks to the Wine Globe, your bottles will stay young (almost) forever.
Explanations:
Just like us, wine needs oxygen, but in moderate doses to avoid premature ageing.
We have deliberately chosen to work exclusively with new barrels and one-wine barrels and have opted for gentle and light toasting in order to obtain wines that are greedy, easy to drink and silky.
The former will bring a maximum micro-oxygenation which will be compensated by the one-wine barrels and later, once bottled, by our “Grand Cru” and “Fleur” corks which are essential for long-keeping wines.
Today, we have a new tool. It has proven itself over the last few years but is not yet very well known by the public. It is the Wine Globe.
It has two enormous advantages:
On the one hand, by being completely hermetic, the Wine Globe allows us to totally control the supply of oxygen or not.
On the other hand, although the glass is a neutral container, it is nevertheless a vector of energy because it is permeable to magnetic fields.
Wines that have been matured for a longer period in the Wine Globe retain their fruitiness and sharpness for much longer, they offer a vibrant mouthfeel, even more greedy and reach an unequalled sapidity.
Now it’s up to you to choose.
Because we are here to discuss and share, we are simply offering you an additional opportunity to discover our wines in a different way.
(*) the Wine globe also exists in 25, 60 and 115 litres
A royal cork is not a luxury!
Or “How to end our quality ageing in style?”
After having raised our different cuvées with patience and abnegation, we feel it is our duty to cork them with the most natural material available: natural cork from certified Portuguese forests.
Even though there is no such thing as a “zero risk” and that risk is part of life, we have chosen to work with a cork artisan who has proven himself since 1902: the Swiss company Chaillot.
By choosing their two best qualities, the Grand Cru cork and the Fleur cork, we put all the chances on our side so that our wines can age in the best conditions.
During the bottling process in our cellars, our corks arrive directly from the Vectoeur laboratory in Beaune, where they are checked, once again, and stored in optimal conditions.
This rigorous process allows us to avoid any risk of molecular exchange that could lead to an organoleptic alteration of our wines.
Because every detail counts!
You love Burgundy wines but …
You sometimes remain on your hunger, if not on your thirst.
You would have preferred it rounder, finer, more mouth-watering, fuller-bodied…
You dream of having a wine that reflects your image.
What if we raised a barrel of Burgundy just for you?
Your signature will be put on the barrel, on the label and even on the cork, just under the wax. It will be visible before uncorking your bottle.
Together, we propose you to discuss, to taste and to enlarge the field of possibilities.
