Domaine Sulauze - 'Cochon' - Field Blend - Coteaux d'Aix en Provence, FR - 2024

Notes from the Winery/Importer

​Blend : all our red varieties, because "tout est bon dans le Cochon!" ("everything is good in the pig!") Average age of vines : 15 years Taste : wine very drinkable and fluid with fruity aromas. --- Working our soil in a biodynamic way Karina and Guillaume settled in the Domaine de Sulauze in 2004. They enforced organic agriculture, and then biodynamic in the vineyard, wheat fields, barley, olive trees, and vegetable garden. ​ Currently, the Domaine has 30 hectares of vines, 2 hectares of barley for the brewery, 2 hectares of wheat for the bread, and 5 hectares of olive trees. We grow everything according to biodynamic and agroecology principles. ​ We don't use weed killer, neither insecticide, neither chemical treatments. Harvest is done by hand. We follow the lunar calendar for every operation: in the vines as well as in the winery. And recently, we have started working a section of our vines by animal traction. Notes from Nadio of Floraison Selections: Certified Organic and Biodynamic According to Guillaume and Karina Lefèvre, "Domaine de Sulauze is more than a vineyard. It's a place that is alive and meant to be shared." And so it is at the annual raucous pig roasts where the bounty of the vineyard & cellar, brewery & hop yard, bakery & mill, olive groves, and farm animals, is all proudly shared at the table. Karina and Guilhaume came to the domaine in 2004 and immediately converted the vines to organic farming and a few years later, to biodynamic farming as well. Today the domaine is a winery, brewery and mixed use farm that encompasses 500 hectares of organic farmland. They have 30 hectares of vines on limestone and sand planted to classic Provence varieties like Vermentino, Grenache Blanc, Ugni Blanc and Clairette for the whites and Grenache, Syrah (and the more rare Sereine), Cab Sauvignon, Cinsault and Mourvèdre. Over the years Guillaume has brought back many vine cuttings taken from massale selection and grafted them onto his rootstock and now makes single parcel bottlings from these vines, including Vermentino and Sciacarello from Antoine Abatucci’s vines and Sereine (a historic, locally adapted variety of Syrah) from Hermitage. Everything is harvested by hand, fermentations are with native yeasts and whether sulfur is added at bottling depends on the vintage and cuvée. The domaine’s single parcels are ploughed by horse.

Notes on the Producer

Certified Organic and Biodynamic According to Guillaume and Karina Lefèvre, "Domaine de Sulauze is more than a vineyard. It's a place that is alive and meant to be shared." And so it is at the annual raucous pig roasts where the bounty of the vineyard & cellar, brewery & hop yard, bakery & mill, olive groves, and farm animals, is all proudly shared at the table. Karina and Guilhaume came to the domaine in 2004 and immediately converted the vines to organic farming and a few years later, to biodynamic farming as well. Today the domaine is a winery, brewery and mixed use farm that encompasses 500 hectares of organic farmland. They have 30 hectares of vines on limestone and sand planted to classic Provence varieties like Vermentino, Grenache Blanc, Ugni Blanc and Clairette for the whites and Grenache, Syrah (and the more rare Sereine), Cab Sauvignon, Cinsault and Mourvèdre. Over the years Guillaume has brought back many vine cuttings taken from massale selection and grafted them onto his rootstock and now makes single parcel bottlings from these vines, including Vermentino and Sciacarello from Antoine Abatucci’s vines and Sereine (a historic, locally adapted variety of Syrah) from Hermitage. Everything is harvested by hand, fermentations are with native yeasts and whether sulfur is added at bottling depends on the vintage and cuvée. The domaine’s single parcels are ploughed by horse. https://www.domainedesulauze.com/

Grapes & Style

Field Blend

A field blend is less a grape variety than an old vineyard idea: multiple grapes planted together, farmed together, picked together, and usually fermented together. Before modern clonal selections and single-variety labeling became the norm, this was a practical way to build balance directly into the vineyard.

The point of a field blend is that no single grape has to do all the work. One variety might bring acidity, another color, another perfume, another tannin or alcohol. Because the grapes ripen on slightly different schedules, the finished wine can have a layered, naturally integrated feel when the vineyard is well understood.

In the glass, field blends can be hard to categorize, which is part of their charm. They often feel more like wines of place than wines of variety: less about naming every component, more about texture, freshness, and the accumulated personality of an old mixed planting. We like them when they feel honest, cohesive, and a little hard to reverse-engineer.