In 2002 we changed the way we harvest grapes, replacing the carrier’s back basket with crates still carried on the back, but each containing three buckets.  
We have completely reorganised the way the harvest is handled as it arrives at the vathouse. We have installed an innovative sorting system which separates the grapes according to their shape, then sends them to different tanks to be made into wine separately.
Round, slightly flattened and crushed grapes, together with the drained juices, each go into separate containers. In this way, we fill four vats at the same time. Non-round grapes and juices account for around 10% of the harvest. 
This idea of separating the fruit at a very early stage is extremely important since any grape which is not round has lost all or some of the aromatic potential of its skin.

Since we don’t use anti-rot pesticides when the fruit is at the half-ripe stage – because we want to avoid using chemical products as far as possible – this sorting technique enables us to eliminate all damaged grapes before vatting and to carry out single grape sorting with accuracy that far exceeds any manual system.
After this operation, we manually re-sort the round and second quality fruit, removing all the little pieces of stalk which might still be joined to the grapes. This is really meticulous work and what a joy it is to vinify grapes of such quality! The system is simple enough, based on a vibrating table which showers the grapes down onto a rotating cylinder. It’s spectacular and you need to see it in operation at Laroze to believe it! There is a very clear improvement in terms of wine quality. Laroze wines have gained in concentration, intensity and precisely defined aromas.