Domaine Augustin
A family history, tradition but especially men!
Domaine Augustin is a small family property located on the heights of Banyuls. The property covers 7 hectares divided into 10 parcels. Even if each is different in regards to the soil / subsoil, the altitude, the sunshine / exposure, the grape variety or the age of the vines one can still distinguish two great types of terroir. The first is at altitude and offers cool, deep land facing the sea (East). The second offers shallower, less rich and warmer soils.
On these plots the Parcé family produces three wines each year: a first red wine “Domaine Augustin” as well as a “Adeodat” vintage which is available in white but also in red.
The Parcé family is also the proud owner of the Domaine de la Préceptorie (Maury, Roussillon) as well as a trading company whose philosophy is to help the renaissance, the recognition of certain appellations of Languedoc-Roussillon rich in history, traditions, personalities but tend to be forgotten or distorted. “Through this activity we do not want to sell our name or our signature but the fruit of the work of a human community, of a collective work where the product and the group passes before the highlighting of a brand / signature“. Let’s go together to meet Vincent and Marc Parcé.
Why did you choose to become a winemaker?
“I was lucky to have the opportunity to continue a family history and in addition to having the choice to accept freely or not this gift … which is not always the case in family businesses … It’s a great responsibility to take up the torch! ”
What is the signature of the wines of the property? What makes it possible to recognize your wines in blind tasting?
“To say that it was me who did it would be a little presumptuous because it is a family job. We make wine the way we like to drink it … Wine is really part of our culture ! We do not make stereotypical wines for newspapers, critics or to make beautiful labels but wines of terroirs, fruit forward, the food friendly … convivial wines made to be drunk … One looks for the syndrome of the empty bottle.
They come from long macerations but are never monsters of concentration … the fruit above all ! ”
What makes your terroir so specific?
“What is special about our region, our region is the meeting of the sea, this sea air with the mountain. Just look at GoogleMaps to understand our very particular situation, this jutting of the Pyrenees into the Mediterranean. Our vineyard enjoys a great amplitude of altitude between its low point which is at the level of the sea and its high point which is _ +400 meters. We enjoy a climate sometimes hot and dry thanks to the tramontane but which can sometimes be very humid, with torrential rainfalls as well as extremely violent thunderstorms. For example the night of November 30, 2014 we had more than 240mm of rain in one night.
We have on our vineyard plots on all possible exposures which is a wealth. Soils are poor. Also the vineyard benefits from an architecture of terracing, this holds our soils which are very unstable. It also forbids the use of any tools of mechanical plowing.
All this allows us to make wines that generally agree perfectly with land-sea recipes (monkfish tail with chorizo, cod with tomato …). ”
If you had to define your passion for wine, what wine represents for you in 3 or 4 words, what would you say?
“I would say that for me it is a root of several generations in a specific place : wine, this wine produced here in extreme conditions is life … life given by mother nature. To make wine is a real passion inked in me. I would say that it is a gift of life, it is accepting to work in an open-air workshop, accepting not to be a master but to be a servant, to accept a generous nature but also demanding and that can sometimes be hard. We must accept each year to question, to adapt the work to the vintage … Not to rest on perceived ideas. To make wine you have to know how to give your time, accept time, learn patience … accept not necessarily understand. There is in the profession of winemaker a desire to last, to leave a trace, to only accompany nature and at the same time to be aware that we are nothing but a part of a whole that is beyond us! » (Marc Parcé)
Do you have an anecdote about the property?
“When we receive on the property, trainees or people who want to get started in the wine we offer them when it is possible to help us in the vineyard. We then take them to a weeding plot … by hand! We do not have a tractor … Usually after an hour they ask us how far the plot goes, if the end is near.
We still have, on our terroirs, a very manual approach, very earthy … an approach that can be found also in some winemakers of Côte Rôtie, Savoie or other terroirs of very steep slopes … but it is moreover in more rare! This is a bit of the fault of current winemakers who have less tendency to get off their tractor and therefore to have a different relationship to the land.
The risk is that with the over-mechanization, the winemakers do not come down from their tractors anymore. So they have a relationship, a different relationship with their plots, with nature: A small means little nonsense, big ways big nonsense …”
Thanks to the Parcé family for its warm hospitality.
Choukroun Chicheportiche Jonathan
Vignobles Famille Parcé
54 av du Puig del Mas
66650 Banyuls sur Mer (France)
+33(0)4 68 81 02 94
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