Maison Mirabeau Rose Winemaking with Guillame Cordonis

This show was published Friday, September 26, 2025

Overview

Guillame Cordonis is the technical director at Maison Mirabeau in Provence.

In this interview, we find out how cool harvesting can help create the delicate colours in Provence rosé and talk about cold stabulation, a technique for extracting extra flavours without extracting colour.

Direct pressing is the technique used in Provence to create the juice used to make rose wines, they do not use the bleeding method used in other regions, usually a technique for red wines.

Grenache, Syrah and Cinsault are the main grape varieties used, with Syrah giving the juice most of its colour.

Colour is very important in the grape selection stage, looking for the very pale pink colour that Provence is known for. This comes before the blending stage when they will focus on the flavour profile on the mouth and nose.

We discuss how they are decreasing the use of copper sulphate, by instead improving the soil to stimulate the vine and protect against disease.

We get into the technical details of extraction using a cooling down system when pressing the grapes to decrease the activity of the enzymes and minimise the extraction of colour. Cold stabulation is the process of extracting the precursors or thiols which have grapefruit, exotic fruits, vegetable, cassis (typical in Sauvignon Blanc) this is a process after pressing the grapes and before blending and fermentation. It is becoming more common amongst producers in Provence to add complexity to their wines.

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