My Adventure in France

WHEN LIFE GIVE YOU LEMON, MAKE LEMONADE

Banyuls-sur-Mer is certainly one of my favorite town in the world, I might want to growth old there someday! South of France, at the boarder of Catalunya, on the Mediterranean coast side, this beautiful town surrounded by mountains, is an epicenter of natural wine production. A great community of winemakers work along to produce some favorites warm wines balanced by the sea brise and altitude of some of their vineyard. I first discover this area in 2013 during a 25 days roadtrip around France. I instantly felt in love with the place.

The plan was to work along Bruno Duchêne. I meet him in Montreal circa 2012, visited him in 2013 while he and his partners were building Le 9 Caves, and visited again many more times. I love this guy energy!

Context

Life has its way sometime to bring you in a different path. Three days before leaving Montreal to Europe (my first stop was to attend my best friend wedding in Sväty Juhr, Slovakia), I had a bike accident. A bad one, with fractures in my upper jaw, my teeth were out, I save you the details, but I had to cancel everything. I had a surgery and needed time to recover and heal. I was stuck in my bed, crying that I was missing Nadja & Andrej’s wedding, and that I would not be able to make my wine this year.

After a few weeks recovering, my boyfriend Sébastien seeing that I was so sad, came to me and said: « Let’s go, let’s go make some wine! » I was a bit confused, what does he means? He is an engineer, he never made wine. But Seb was enthusiast, he told me he will be my slave (hahaha! his words); I will tell him what to do and he will execute.

We bought our flight tickets to Barcelona. I would never have gone by myself. I was still quite weak of eating mainly liquid food, I needed 2-3 naps a day. Bones healing takes quite a lot of energy from your body. Also, I was scared to be around people, I was afraid that someone will bump into me and hurts me. Seb makes me feel safe, he was my bodyguard.

Bruno was on his last week of harvest, most of his fruits had already been processed, but he welcomed me in his cellar with my project. I contacted Philippe Wies, Domaine de la Petite Baigneuse in Maury. He was about to start his harvest. He agreed to sell me grapes to make my wine. Philippe was extremely generous and let me choose the grapes I preferred. The harvest day was festif, I gather a team of friends (Marc Frandon, Amélie & Sam who harvested for Bruno, Grégoire, Philippe, Thomas, and Seb) and they got to work. I was there supervising, cutting a cluster here and there, but I couldn't carry a bucket. It was putting too much pressure on my wounds. After harvest, we sat down together to share some deliciousness from the region and taste some of Philippe's wines.

It was time to drive back to Banyuls-sur-Mer with our precious load. We were quite heavy, it was stressful, but we made it safely and unload the grapes to let them rest in the fridge for the night. The next day, we proceed the grapes, slowly with all the care in the world. We made an amazing millefeuille in the cone-shaped barrel and let the fermentation start. Bruno took care of the rest of the vinification and I came back in May to finally taste the wine.

What an incredible adventure it was. I could never had achieve this wine without the support of my love and my friends.