Le Petit Domaine de Gimios "Rouge de Cause"

Grapes: Terret rose, terret noir, terret blanc, carignan, grenache, syrah, muscat, cinsault, aramon and alicante

Region: Languedoc, France

Vintage :  2021

Anne-Marie and Pierre Lavaysse live and make wine around the small village of Saint-Jean-de-Minervois. Here in the French south, at high altitude and with calcareous soils, Anne-Marie has been making wine for twenty-five years. Ever since the 1970s, she has grown her own vegetables and had cows that have given milk for butter, yoghurt and cheese. She says that since she was very young she has wanted to become a farmer and live in symbiosis with nature. The step to start making wine was easy for her. In 1999, she bottled her first wine. She mainly grows muscat but also has two vineyards planted with a variety of red grape varieties, including terret noir, cinsault, alicante, grenache, carignan, aramon and mourvedre. Since the mid-2000s, her son Pierre has been involved in taking care of the work in the vineyard. The work in the vineyard is done according to biodynamic principles. The only preparations used in the vineyards to protect the vines against diseases are decoctions of herbs that grow around the plantations and a tea made from grapefruit seeds (!). They also benefit from their cows, the cows are released to pasture and clean up in the vineyards during the winter months while taking the opportunity to release some manure.