The Domaine

One of the  first decisions we took when establishing the vineyard was to start the conversion to fully accredited organic status.  This was not  a ‘religious’ conviction  – for given the choice between a good non-organic wine and a bad organic one, I would take the non-organic wine every time ! Our vines are grown in a region where the sun shines most of the time, and if it does rain, the powerful Mistral wind blows the vines dry the next day. We firmly believe you can avoid chucking pesticides, insecticides, synthetic fertilisers…into your soils and onto your vines, then this is the right thing to do.

The conversion process towards organic status takes three years, thus all our wines since the 2005 vintage are fully certified organic wines.  However, it is important to realise that in France and a lot of Europe, the organic certification only covers what happens outside in the vineyard – it doesn’t  cover what happens to the grapes once they have been picked.  After nurturing the vines on an organic basis, it is possible to pick your grapes by machine, send them through pumps, add large quantities of sulphur, industrial yeasts, enzymes, and plenty of other good chemical wine-making products…and yet still slap on an “Organic” label at the end of the whole process.

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