Producer Article

Tribouley – an outsider who understudied with Gauby and then began his own estate in 2002 – farms roughly 30 acres (biodynamically) and sells no grapes. That statistic shocked me when I entered his cramped and tiny cellar. Where in the world does he find room there for wine from 30 acres? The solution to this seeming mystery is that he has all the room he requires given his pathetically low yields. In a quantitatively good vintage, he bottles 1,700 cases. But it is fruit from his 10 acres near Maury (variously on reddish Marne chalk, and quartzite-rich schist and sandstone) that are the focus for the two cuvees (both matured in older barrels, favoring demi-muids) that are sold in the U.S. Both his parcels in the Les Bacs just east of Maury and in the Coume du Roi (the basis for his Orchis) are around 75:25 Grenache-to-Carignan; northwestern in exposure; and, he says, almost perpetually windy. (I had to crouch down like a head-pruned vine just to walk against the gusts in Les Bacs on a December afternoon.) - David Schildknecht, The Wine Advocate Impassioned by wines from way back, after working as a carpenter and then as a social worker, I decided to settle with my wife and my two daughters between the mountain and the sea, closer to Luisa’s Italian and Mediterranean roots, in the heart of the fabulous terroirs of the Roussillon. In 1999-2000, I obtained my French professional baccalaureate with a specialization in viticulture and oenology, at the Lycée in Beaune, in Burgundy. After working for a few months with Gérard Gauby in 2001, I bought 8 hectares of vines in Latour de France and took over the "management" of 2.5 hectares in Calce (vines at the foot of the Pyrenees, northwest of Perpignan, a city in the south of France, a few kilometers from the Spanish border). Then in 2004, I bought 4 hectares in Maury. We decided to use "bio-agriculture", to live from the earth while respecting it, to never use chemical weed killers and to plough the soil and, when needed, because the vines are close together, to go back to the ancestral practice of using a mule. We decided to treat the vines to protect them from diseases using natural products to "accompany" the plant and not substitute itself to it. And finally, not use chemical fertilizers in order to allow the plant to find nutrients on its own, with her roots, and within the depths of the terroir. Our goal is to obtain a product of quality while respecting the soil. It is important to us to work in order to bring the vine to live long. The average yields are about 13hl/hectare. Understanding the exact moment to harvest in order to find the right maturity of the grape is crucial. This moment varies according to the varietals and the vintages. Harvesting is not done by machine, but by hand and all the grapes are sorted. To avoid crushing, harvesting is done in small crates of 13Kg. We only put in the cuves grapes that could be eaten. We use little or no sulfites, no industrial yeasts, the grapes are declustered and put in "cuves" by hand. The temperatures during fermentation are controlled to be between 18 and 23 degrees, little "remontage" and "pigeage" is done, all of this in order to respect the grapes and to succeed to preserve the aroma of the fruit. To sum up, we work to produce a "sincere" wine, respecting the vintage and the terroir. I think that the extraordinary quality of a wine comes from its diversity and from our ability to understand a little bit more every year without trying to master everything. - Written by Jean-Louis Tribouley and translated