Journal of my journey

Initiated into vines in my earliest childhood by my maternal grandfather, a vine grower in Anjou, one could say that I fell into it when I was little. I was only four when my big brother, Jo Pithon, winegrower settled on the hillsides of Layon. The memories in that cellar… I have dozens of them and only good ones. Therefore its natural that I have come to wine or that wine has come to me.

At the age of 14 I worked as and apprentice in my native Anjou. Made aware of quality at
a very early age, 18 years old I left my maternal land to continue my education in the Bordelais region. Some courses enabled me to discover other wine regions such as the Jaracon or the Beaujolais. My studies finally over I could, now, concentrate wholeheartedly on my passion for the earth and the wine.

From experience to experience, five years passed working in the Bordelais (Saint Emilion) where slowly slowly the steps of knowledge were engraved. My life leads me to meet a lot of people, amongst others, Stephane Derenoncourt, wine producer, self taught from the Borelais area. I discovered with him the sensitivity to how wines can become pleasure, balance and lightness. The love of a job well done, the precision in the choice of interventions, the importance of tasting during the production of wines and the respect for the prime material, are vital.
It made sound silly, but its everything you didn’t learn at school that counts. We never learn that its essential to make wines which you love. They never speak to you about poetry, love and pleasure. Stephane made me understand all that and nothing more. Sometimes one meeting changes everything.

It seems natural to me to have a cow, a mare and a dog for my personal equilibrium and just as naturally comes the profound desire and necessity to fly with my own wings or to look after my own vines.

At the end of the year 2000 I started to search for somewhere to live, somewhere where I could live this passion for the earth and the wine. I was attracted to Calce, in the Eastern Pyrenees, as if there could be no other place where I could live out this adventure. It only took a telephone call and a meeting with my brother’s friend, Gerard Gauby and I have been here ever since. In one month I went from unemployed to vine grower, the dossiers at the banck replacing the ones for welfare.

The village of Calce in the Eastern Pyrenees-

THE UNREACHABLE DREAM OF HAVING YOUR OWN VINES, YOU OWN WINE BARRELS AND YOU OWN WINE, A FAIRY TALE COME TRUE!

The first day in my vines stays forever engraved in my memory. It was the third of January 2001 in the Commune of Calce. There were old Carignan planted by someone called Saturne in 1940. View over the Mediterranean, the Corbieres and the Pyrenees. Secatures in hand. Head down. The adventure of my live started then.

Never in my young life had I ever thought it would be possible to see myself with 8.5 hectares (21 acres) of old vines on the shale slopes. Even in my wildest dreams I had never imagined it would be this good. A new beginning in my life, which wasn’t the outcome but the start of a crazy adventure.

Saturne plot- View of the Corbières

Ever since then, I’ve had only one desire: to give everything to my vines so that then the give it back in their grapes and in my wine. You must be proud and put you guts, your sweat, you love, you desires, you joy and your dreams into your wine. Growing biologically was for me self evident, a mark of respect, a qualitative requirement and a choice of life style. It’s economically irrational for a young enterprise like mine but I don’t know any other way to be than whole; generous and natural.
FREEDOM I CHERISH YOUR NAME!