Domaine de la Grange des Pères
Buy wines of Domaine de la Grange des Pères
When Laurent Vaillé decided to grow wine on the remote slopes of the Languedoc, almost everyone thought he was crazy. Today we know that he was right. Some of the best wines in France grow here.
Laurent Vaillé, who died far too young in 2021 and whose work is carried on today by his long-time companion, his brother, was a farmer's son, artist and passionate winemaker. At the end of the 1980s, he made his way to the best wine estates in France, including Trévallon, Beaucastel, Zind-Humbrecht, Cochy-Dury, Chave and Beaucastel. He learnt his trade there. With the knowledge he had acquired, he searched for suitable, remote vineyards in his home region of Languedoc, in an area where the AOP Terrasses du Larzac is located today, and found what he was looking for in Aniane.
He planted them with Mourvèdre, Syrah, Cabernet, Counoise and other grape varieties whose cuttings he had received from the aforementioned vineyards. His colleagues in the region thought he was crazy, because at that time most of them favoured quantity over quality, flat vineyards that could be worked by machine. He had a completely different vision and was proved right. The "barn of the ancestors", the Grange des Pères, became the symbol of a new Languedoc of great wines. And the red Grange des Pères, as well as the even rarer white wines from Roussanne and Marsanne, are the symbols of this.
The white grape varieties are blended before fermentation and matured in used demi-muids. The red grape varieties are harvested and pressed separately before being matured separately in 228-litre barrels.
