Château de Lafont

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France
Saint-Vivien
Château de Lafont

Château de Lafont is the Di Tullio family's home and vineyard. Home and Vineyard of the Di Tullio family.

For news and events about Château de Lafont wines, please follow us on our company page at Di Tullio & Sons Fine Wines.

07/04/2026

From Dordogne to your glass. 🇫🇷

Meet Di Tullio & Sons, presenting organically crafted, small-production wines from Château de Lafont alongside a curated selection of fine French imports, labels rarely experienced beyond fine dining tables. 🍇

🗓 22 May 2026 | Friday | 2PM–10PM
📍Hokkaido Table, L2.15.0, Level 2, The Exchange TRX

🔗 Secure your tickets now via Keepsake by GSC. Early bird tickets are sold out!

For non-Muslims aged 21 and above only.

06/04/2026

This year's winter was wet and warm, lacking the very cold temperatures that we usually get, which led to an unusually early bud break in early march for most of our grape varieties.
However the second half of march was consistently cold, with daily avg temperatures of under 10°C and nighttime temperatures under 5°C, which really slowed down the vegetal growth. Our Cabernet Sauvignon only had their bud break 1 month later, in early april, because of this long cold pause.
We were lucky and narrowly avoided the frost episodes in late march, where temperatures went down to -1°C.
In the past few days in early april we finally had some sunny and hot days with temperatures up to 27°C, causing the vine growth to suddenly explode. In just 3 days the buds have grown more than they did in the past 3 weeks. Seems like we are back on schedule and hope for a great vintage !

22/11/2025

Winter is Coming
As the temperatures are getting colder, the vine is accelerating its process of entering dormancy. It is storing all its remaining energy from its leaves back into its roots and trunk for the winter. Once all the leaves have fallen we start pruning.
Between the vine rows, the winter cover crops that we sowed one month ago are slowly growing. They will cover the soil during winter. The mix of plants that we chose will provide fertilization, prevention of weeds, and soil decompaction.

02/11/2025

Our free-run wines and press wines are currently all kept in our "malolactic room". This room is heated, in order to keep the wines at 20-22°C, optimal for the activity of the Malolactic Fermentation, where the malic acid is naturally converted into lactic acid.
Amphorae and oak vessels offer stability of temperature, and a light micro-oxygenation. Early contact with oak also offers a wide range of benefits to the wine, in color, aroma, texture, stability.. especially to red wines which are high in tannins and anthocyanins.
This year has been extreme on many aspects, and the microbial activity in the wines is also much higher than the norm. Malolactics are happening spontaneously, in some cases before devatting, in some cases before the sugars are finished. VA and bretts are a potential threat this year, so we are even more cautious than usual.
We monitor the wines more frequently and act faster than in "normal" years. Once the malolactic is completed in a wine we rack it one last time. The clear wine is separated from the heavy lees, which are rich in bacteria and pose a risk to the wines. The wine is then in a safer phase to continue it's élevage.

30/10/2025

Devatting and pressing of the reds.
The berries were very small this year, and the quality of skins were very good, so we went for a longer maceration than usual, to slowly and softly extract a maximum of fine tanins.
After about 5 weeks in the vats for the Merlots, and 4 weeks for the Cabernets, it is time to run off the wines and press the skins. The free-run wines are concentrated, the acidities are good (with an average pH between 3.5 and 3.6) and the rich tanins feel silky even before élevage. Aromatics are fresh. The press wines also are of great quality. Very promising red wines on this vintage 2025.

10/10/2025

10.10.2015 Last day of Harvest 2025
Sémillons for dessert wine. Harvested late at a very advanced stage of botrytis (a.k.a noble rot), these Sémillon are very sweet and concentrated. The yields are ridiculously low and the pressed juice came out at about 23.5% potential abv (approx 400 g/L of sugar)
We had a very long harvesting season, starting with our dry whites which we harvested on 28th of august, over 6 weeks ago !
Our dry whites and red wines are slowly finishing their sugars in fermentation, while this dessert wine will only start in a few days.

02/10/2025

02 Oct 2025, last day of harvest for red grapes.
Cabernet Sauvignon planted in 2022. Our terroir has generally not been warm enough in the past for this late ripening variety, but we decided to plant some in anticipation of hot years which are more and more frequent.
Even these young 3 years old vines needed an extra week of ripening compared to our Cabernets Francs. Fortunately the past week has had clear skies and big diurnal variations, with cold mornings under 10°C, and sunny afternoons slightly above 20°C. Perfect conditions to accelate the refining of tanins and extractibility of the skins. A big difference just by tasting the berries between last week and this week. Hopefully the result will be good for the first year of full production of this plot.

22/11/2024

Our last farming work of the year is to sow some organic seeds between the vine rows for the winter.
For this final and light work we've been hiring a horse for the past 2 years. The horse is lightweight compared to a tractor and avoids compacting the soil before its resting period.
These seeds will grow into a "winter cover crop", which will have multiple functions in restoring/enhancing the soil and biodiversity, and acting as an organic green fertilizer.
Grass species (triticale, rye, oat..) have the power to decompact and restructure the soil by their deep and strong roots. And by their biomass they also create organic matter and block unwanted weeds.
Leguminous plants (beans, peas, vetch, clover..) enrich the soil by fixing nitrogen.
Some cruciferous plants (white mustard, fodder raddish) help to eliminate soil pests, and are melliferous, helping to increase the population of honey bees.
Every year we prepare our own mix, including various plants, with types and proportions depending on what the soil needs.

23/10/2024

De-vatting, the last step of vinification. After pouring out the free-run wines, the remaining skins, lees and seeds are shoveled out of the fermentation vat for pressing. The resulting press wine will be aged separately, and in the future may or may not be blended into our final wine. It can help to increase tannic structure and texture if needed, and if it is of good quality.

12/10/2024

Last day of harvest 2024
For the first time we harvest Cabernet Sauvignon (first photo) on the Lafont vineyard in Saint-Vivien. Historically our limestone hilltop terroir, of cool and shallow soils, was not warm enough to fully ripen Cabernet Sauvignon. After noticing the impact of global warming during 2018, 2019 and 2020, where Merlots and even Cabernets Franc saw unusually high sugar contents, we decided to plant some Cabernet Sauvignon in anticipation of hot years to come.
This variety will allow our blend to gain in structure, to balance the body and power of Merlot when needed on years exteme heat. This is not one of those hot years ... But in our region the weather dictates the profile of the wines, beyond our control and efforts, so it's good to have blending options.
Our whites this year are all between 12 and 13% abv and our reds all between 12.5 and 13.5% abv. It will be considered a "classic" vintage.. possibly in the good sense of it. The whites have fully or nearly finished their fermentations and are showing great promise. The reds harvested last week are at mid-fermentation now (last photo) with nice color and aromatics.

07/10/2024

Beginning of the red fermentations.
After a few days of cold pre-maceration, the Merlots slowly begin their fermentation by the action of their indigenous natural yeasts.
Although it was a cool year, there is immediately a lot of color in the musts, with hopefully a good amount of ripe and extractible tannins. The first flowing juices are already very dark, much darker comparatively to the cold years of the last decade, such as 2013, 2017 or 2021, which were 3 vintages for which we decided to skip production for Château de Lafont.
Our main cuvées of Merlot are in 50 hectoliters stainless steel vats and begin with slow pump-overs, which will later be taken over by délestages (rack-and-return).
The smaller experimental batches are fermented in DIY-cut 500L barrels and punched-down by hand. Every year recently we've been vinifying some small batches separetly to learn more about ourselves and our plots and vines. It could be to compare different plots, harvesting dates, fermentation conditions, etc...

Adresse

Lieu-Dit Lafont
Saint-Vivien
24230

Site Web

http://www.chateaudelafont.com/

Notifications

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