Bastien Baillet and Céline Schuers met as teenagers and bonded over their love of nature and working with their hands. They both proceeded to spend their early adulthood in Languedoc studying agriculture and working in Domaines in the Languedoc and Roussillon regions. After apprenticeships in the Fenouillèdes, a small mountain range between the Corbières Mountains and the northern rim of the Pyrenees, they fell in love with the climate and purchased first hectare of old vines in 2014. They have since slowly added on to their holdings, now farming about 5 hectares. They grow almost entirely native varieties, all of which is certified organic.
Bastien and Céline try to be as low intervention and low tech as possible, both in their farming and their winemaking. They jokingly describe themselves as peasants, doing all of the fieldwork and winemaking entirely by hand. This Roc Traoucat is 100% Carignan Blanc, grown in calcareous black shale and clay-limestone soil which gives this wine a creamy minerality.
2020 La Bancale, Roc Traoucat Blanc, Roussillon France
From the winemaker:
The grapes were harvested on the morning of August 28th and direct pressed upon arrival in the cellar. The juice undergoes one-night of cold settling, then is racked off the heavy lees straight into large stainless-steel vats for fermentation. Alcoholic fermentation begins naturally using only indigenous yeasts. Alcoholic and malolactic fermentation finished simultaneously on September 19th. The wine was racked on September 20th and a very low dose of sulfur was added.
Maturation: Aged 5 months in stainless-steel tanks and bottled with a light filtration.
