The Domaine

At La Brillane, we believe that it all comes down to respecting nature – we respect  the integrity of our soil, our vines, our grapes, and our wines.  Therefore we do avoid synthetic chemical fertilisers, preferring to spread sheep manure once a year and, up to seven times a year we plough the vines, to keep them free of weeds, rather than using a single squirt of weedkiller.  When spraying against diseases,  we use  sulphur and copper sulphate only in very limited quantities and finally, we pick everything by hand.  Our fundamental belief is that with minimum chemical intervention in every single stage of the winemaking process, you can produce healthy grapes from healthy vines, and the wines will make themselves.  From the beginning, this was the overriding principle which governed us at La Brillane.

Being organic, we are often asked if we use any sulfites.  The answer is that we do:  over 40 % of our production is exported to Japan, the Far East, the USA and throughout Europe.  If we used no SO2 at all, we would run the severe risk of our wines arriving in those far-flung places better suited to making vinaigrette than being presented in a decanter on the table…  It is, as always, a question of proportion – we use the absolute minimum amount to ensure that when we send out our wines, we are secure in the knowledge that they will arrive safely at their destination and once there,  be stable enough to keep safely and be enjoyed for many years.

Ecocert is the main European certification organisation – they visit us twice a year to make sure that we aren’t cheating.  We urge you to come and see our vines for yourself , and realise that this philosophy of respect really is at the heart of our wines.

1 | 2