Description
Designation: IGP Haute-Vallée de l’Orb
Grape variety: 100% chardonnay
Soil: iron-rich clay on limestone scree base
Vine age: 20 years
Harvest: manual
Winemaking: pneumatic pressing at low pressure, active lees maceration followed by static cold settling
Aging: 8 to 10 months, half in tanks and half in barrels
Production: around 20,000 bottles per year
Our primary profession is winemaker at the Sylvaplana Abbey in Faugères, a beautiful appellation often called the ‘cru lumière.’ So there, suddenly we go from light to shadow, from schist to limestone, from warmth to cold, and from many fellow winemakers to wanting to come see you but impossible to find on the GPS. So, to be happy, let’s live hidden, but we feel “a bit in foreign soil.” Pure Chardonnay vinified half in tanks and half in barrels. Liveliness, freshness, and power as a guiding thread, this cuvée is the realization of all the hopes placed in the Joncels terroir. To be enjoyed after 2 years of aging or to be forgotten in the cellar for about ten years.
Producer Profile
Our adventure was born from a utopia, that of finding in Languedoc, this extraordinary region where even the ideas we think are the craziest end up coming true, the land that would give life to Chardonnays made for aging. Thus, although it took us years, spent straining our eyes over geological maps and exploring the mountains of the hinterland, our quest finally came to fruition at the same time as we discovered the forgotten vines of the old Benedictine abbey of Joncels, in the heart of the terroir of the Upper Orb Valley.
At the borders of Hérault and Aveyron, this area is in a way the Wild West of Languedoc, both its extreme point – the watershed is nearby – and its new frontier, or rather its rediscovered frontier. For if the slopes and the harshness of the climate – here we exceed 600 meters in altitude – had led our ancestors to prefer less demanding lands, we are today rediscovering all its richness, stemming from the encounter between a clay-limestone soil, a very close bedrock, and climatic conditions that ensure an exceptional temperature range between day and night.
Created in 2013, the Domaine de Bon Augure now has nearly nine hectares of vines, planted on steep hillsides by a farmer from the village of Joncels in the early 1990s. Six are in Chardonnay, a rare grape variety at such a low latitude but perfectly suited to the terroir of the Haute-Vallée de l’Orb, one in Petit Manseng and one in Pinot Noir, to which are added a few rows of Grenache Gris, Sauvignon Blanc, Chenin Blanc, and Petite Arvine.
The vine is at ease here amidst mountain landscapes. The vegetative cycle is, however, later than in the rest of Languedoc, with budburst patiently waiting for the end of the long winter and harvests not beginning until the end of September, whereas they are already finished on the plains soils.
