Domaine Peyres Roses: finely-engineered bio vineyards

Astrid and Olivier Bonnafont work their Domaine Peyres Roses vineyard in Gaillac with missionary-serious bio zeal. No chemicals or artificial fertilizers are used on the vines or in their wines. A horse is used to cultivate the vineyard, and they’ve recently obtained a pump that sprays, using the action of its wheels being turned, the copper sulfate used to control downy mildew. Replacing their tractor-driven pump by a horse-drawn pump means less diesel fumes pollute their vines.

They have the right, under their bio certification, to use 20 kilos of copper a year on their 7-ha vineyard, but they are only using two or three kilos a year. And they are as parsimonious with their farmland. Only half of their 14 hectares is planted in vines; the rest is left to grassland and forest.

Besides providing a complete biological range of plants and insects, this also fits with Olivier Bonnafont’s training as a forestry engineer. Before purchasing the Domaine Peyres Roses in 2000, he managed forests in northern France for Saint-Gobain’s Building Distribution’s Timber Group. Managing a forest and managing an organic vineyard evidently have a lot in common. When vines need to be removed, he replaces them with fruit trees or oak truffle trees. Grass and wild flowers are planted between the vineyard rows, giving the vineyard a natural, verdant setting.

Madame Bonnafont comes from a Calvados-making family in Normandy, so her transition to wine making was not difficult. Her domain is in the organic garden that provides most of the vegetables consumed by the family. She is also busy planting different herbs and flowers that provide aromatherapy for the vines. Infusions made from volatile plant materials and aromatic compounds are used as natural herbicides and fungicides. These preparations are made from various plants, including absinthe wormwood, stinging nettles, lavender and comfrey.

The proof in their natural approach is in their wines, which includes a minerally, dry white, made from native Gaillac Mauzac and Loin de l’œil grapes, and the Muscadelle grape that originated in Bordeaux, and which was planted here over 80 years ago. There’s also an AOC Gaillac red “Tradition,” which is made from Duras and Braucol (known elsewhere as Fer Servadou) grapes from southwestern France, along with some Merlot and Syrah. This wine was served with a Terrine de Lapin (rabbit) pâté that was part of a dinner served during the May 13-16 “Les Tables en fête du Gaillac,” an annual event where Gaillac winemakers open their vineyards to visitors. The Bonnafont family offers this afternoon meal for a very reasonable €14 per adult and €6 per child. Just about all of the ingredients come from the family farm, and the meal is prepared, using traditional recipes, by Madame Bonnafont and her mother. What I appreciated as much as the home cooked meal was how ably and willingly their four sons, Louis, Charles, Armand and Antoine, ages eight to sixteen, assisted in serving the meal [hint, hint to my three sons].

The “Cuvée Tradition” vines are from 10 to 15 years of age, grown on the vineyard’s clay-limestone soil. The yield is 45 hl/ha. Indigenous yeast, a short maceration of 12 days and fermentation in stainless steel tanks gives this wine ample fruit, and a nice, rounded mouthfeel. Nothing pretentious at all about it, and, at the vineyard price of €5.90, it’s a real bargain.

There’s also a “Cuvée Vielles Vignes” red wine made from Duras, Braucol and Merlot vines that are over 40 years of age. The yield for these wines is 30 hl/ha. A five-week maceration and a gentle extraction to release the tannins produces an elegant, well balanced, spicy wine, with hints of cherries, that is worthy of aging in the bottle for several years. The vines are grown on a part of the farm that has an abundance of the pink limestone that gives the property its name.

The third Domaine Peyres Roses red wine is called the “Cuvée Charles,” which is produced from “Cuvée Vielles Vignes” wine, following its fermentation. This wine gets 12 months of aging in fine-grain, two-or-three-year-old oak barrels, giving it a spicy, round texture, with delicate vanilla notes.

They also make two dry whites from Loin de l’œil, Mauzac and Muscadelle grapes, “Le Blanc Sec” that is fermented on lees and a “Cuvée Armand” that is aged in oak barrels for 12 months. But the star here is the “Cuvée Louis,” a beautifully balanced, with just the right touch of acidity, sweet wine. It’s somewhat a misnomer to call this a sweet wine, as there is not the cloying sweetness that is often found in hastily made vin doux. “Cuvée Louis” is only made in certain years when the vent d’Autan, the dry wind that brings Mediterranean heat through southwestern France in the winter, blows. In the Langue d’Oc, the language that was spoken in this part of France when it was called Occitanie, autan meant autel (church altar). The vent d’Autan, it was said, blew from Jerusalem in the direction of the old village church altars. The grapes for the “Cuvée Louis” are harvested between Christmas and January 1st, after the drying winds have removed most of their moisture and concentrated the sugar in them. They are then fermented in oak barrels, where they develop into a beautifully balanced wine of complex aromas and a refreshing amount of acidity. At €15 a bottle, the “Cuvée Louis” represents extraordinary value-for-money.

Bonnafont said that he adds a minimum dosage of sulfites to his wines to protect them during transport and to help preserve them when they’re stored under non-optimal conditions. “I made some non-sulfite wine once,” he said with a smile, “and it turned out to be the best vinegar that I had ever tasted.”

Judging from the questions and interest being shown by the four or five local winemakers who also participated in this “Open Cellar door” visit to the Domaine Peyres Roses, there are others interested in organic, sustainable vineyards. His missionary zeal for using natural biodiversity to improve the growing conditions and to develop the vine’s natural resistance to illness and insect pests was convincing to even elderly winemakers whose rough hands and stooped backs reflected years of hard vineyard work. They continually questioned him about the preparation of his natural infusions and when they needed to be applied to the vines.

“I find it refreshing that there’s increased interest here in organic farming,” he said. “Around a quarter of the 140 winemakers in the Gaillac appellation are now farming their vines this way, and it is growing in popularity.”

He said that he plans to start grazing sheep in his vineyard to keep vegetation under control during the wintertime and to add nutrients to the soil.

As I was leaving, his wife told me that they weren’t “baba cool” (French for aging hippies). She explained that they were simply dedicated to living a more natural lifestyle by consuming less and by not polluting the planet–and that they were trying to teach their four sons these values. The fact that they are making excellent wine seems to be a by-product of all of this, which makes their wine that much more amazing. The only thing missing, it seems, is a “Cuvée Antoine.”

Tagged as: Gaillac, Southwest