Our Farming

People often ask - 'are you organic?'.

The answer is - no we are not. At least not yet.

Our farming is carried out by the viticulture team of Domaine Lafage, and we work within the parameters that Jean-Marc and his team define.

All of their production is certified as 'HVE level 3' - This is the highest level of the French 'Sustainability' program. Frankly, the bar is not very high, but it is a good place to start (and there are plenty of neighbours who are not even certified with HVE).

Our old vines are too close together to drive tractors between.

In the olden days, they used to use a horse to work the soil. And then a 'chenillard' - or caterpillar tractor - pictured (not ours!)

When we bought the first vineyard in the Coume de Roy, and the vines were tended by our friends Richard and Mark, they did everything by hand.

In 2012, we moved to work with Jean-Marc Lafage, and moved to a more mechanised farming - and we pulled out every fifth row, so that we could drive a tractor, and carry out the vine treatments much quicker.

We have never ploughed between the vines, and we have pretty messy vineyards - we like it that way, and we don't mind many of the plants that find their way into our vineyards, but there are some troublesome species which we control with one annual herbicide treatment targeted at the woody perennial weeds.

Or we pull them out by hand after a good rain storm.

In dry years (2022 and 2023) they generally aren't a problem but in 2018 and 2020 there was so much growth that we could hardly see the vines.

As for fungicides and pesticides - we use the minimum we feel we can get away with, but in the years where downy mildew can wipe out organic growers, we reserve the right to use the most effective systemic treatment, and similarly, when threatened by eudemis - the grape berry moth - we control the population with carefully targeted treatments.

We nearly got wiped out in 2014, and haven't worked out a way to avoid this particular pest.

And then there's the wild boar....

Nowadays, I am spending some of my time advocating for 'regenerative' viticulture, and Jean-Marc has been building in some regenerative practices to his farming of Domaine Lafage, so I am hopeful of moving our farming towards a more thoughtful, sustainable, low input viticulture.

But it takes patience, time, and a degree of risk, so we are taking small steps.