Ardévine

Domaines Rouvinez is a family business founded in 1947 by Bernard Rouvinez and continued by his sons Dominique and Jean-Bernard. Today, Véronique Besson-Rouvinez (winemaking), Philippe Rouvinez (commercial) and Frédéric Rouvinez (management) ensure the continuity of the company in the third generation. The House of Rouvinez has revolutionized the winemaking industry through continuous innovation, with a focus on high-quality wines and indigenous Valais grape varieties such as Petite Arvine and Cornalin.

Jean-Bernard and Dominique Rouvinez were pioneers in environmental protection and integrated production, dispensing with soil herbicides, using drip irrigation and promoting biodiversity through targeted flora colonization and the restoration of dry stone walls. The third generation is continuing this tradition, with some of the vineyards being run according to organic guidelines and new pruning methods extending the life of the plants.

It is up to the cellar master to compose a complex, finesse-rich but balanced taste experience from wines of different characters. Often, colourful, full-bodied and tannic wines are blended with lighter, fruit-intensive wines to achieve a more complex, intense harmony of aromas. The aim is not to conceal the weaknesses of a wine, but to combine strengths; the cuvée should be of higher quality and taste better than the single-varietal wine. In order for a cuvée to present itself as a harmonious composition, characteristics such as fruitiness, acidity, tannin content, alcohol content and residual sweetness have to be very precisely sensory assessed during preliminary tastings. It is an art that requires a great deal of knowledge, skill, sensitivity and experience to finely match complementary varieties to create a particularly round and harmonious wine.

The terms assemblage and cuvée sometimes cause more confusion than clarity. This is because they are used differently in French than in German. In German-speaking countries, the term cuvée and the synonym assemblage are used for a blend of different grape varieties, vintages or sites. Not so in France. Cuvée comes from the French Cuve (vat or wine container) and actually refers to a certain amount of wine in a vessel. Accordingly, in French, each separately bottled wine is called a cuvée - in the sense of bottling. The composition of the cuvée is called assemblage in France. If simple wines are blended, the French speak of a coupage.