Weatherwise, luck was with us. During the spring and summer 2000, the climatic conditions were exceptionally good and allowed us to produce a good quality wine in spite of the vineyards bad condition and our own lack of experience.

Our quality approach related to the terroir lead us to produce two wines :

• The first wine, good for laying down, aged in oak barrels.
• The second, a wine easy to drink, young, supple and fruity.

Total yield for the 2000 vintage :26 hectol/hectare.

At Sainte Barbe, the new millenium didn't start very well. As in the rest of Bordeaux region, the climate prevented us from producing wines comparable to the 2000 vintage.

We took the difficult and painful decision not to bottle the wine and to sell it in bulk to the trade.

In the winery, we decided to install a thermoregulation system and to buy a sorting table for the harvest.

During June the weather was cold and humid, and many of the flowers did not mature, particularly on the old Merlots which count nevertheless for more than half the estate. In September, good weather with dry winds coming from the north allowed us a good crop.

Quality was there but with a very poor yield of 12 hectolitres/hectare.

The hottest year for the last two centuries. This was good news for us because the soil in the vineyard, rich in clay ,allowed the vines to resist under the hot weather.

Many people harvested too early. At Sainte Barbe we waited and were rewarded with a perfect phenolic maturity to pick the grapes. Nevertheless, we had to harvest the Merlot in early September and completed the whole crop by the end of the month. The results were satisfactory. We produced a smooth, rich wine but with a small yield of 28 hectolitres/hectare.

2003 was also our first year in producing a Rosé, to add to our line of reds .

After four years we were starting to understand better the personality of our vineyard and which parcel were better adapted to producing a certain type of wine. We now manage each parcel separately, in terms of foliar surface and green harvesting.

Observing how some parcels were reacting to our husbandry, we have decided to produce a still higher quality wine, called 'Cuvée VSP' lowering the yield to an extreme 4 bunches of grapes per vine, using picking boxes for for hand harvesting and making melolactic fermentation directly in 100% new oak barrels. The results is beyond all our hopes.

Contrary to 2003, the harvest was late and Merlots were picked in the last days of September and then we waited till mid October for the Cabernets.

The wines produced are rich in colour and truity (an increased period of prefermentary maceration in cold conditions were applied). This is our best harvest since we took over Sainte Barbe, with yields for the first time at a very reasonable 46 hectolitres/hectare.