Domaine La Grange english

Nursery at La Grange

A pair of kestrels is raising their young at our house. These usually shy and careful birds have gotten used to me and my camera by now.

Especially the inexperienced and curious young birds look down upon me from their nest. Occasionally their parents then issue a warning in the form of a resolute screech; then the young ones hurriedly withdraw into their nest once again. There are three young kestrels that will be fully fledged soon enough.

Our consultant Gwenael Thomas is absolutely delighted, because the kestrels will chase away the small birds that, when the grapes are ripe, will come to our vineyards and peck at them.

We can't blame them, but we would prefer to drink our wine ourselves, after all.

Orphan at La Grange

Our sheep Susi didn't take her motherly duties very seriously: She abandoned her daughter Frisette. A surrogate father was found quickly, though. François built a small pen in his workshop and is bottle-feeding little Frisette.

The little lamb immediately understood that François is her new and most important care-giver; she follows him everywhere.

All others she tries to avoid. I'm just waiting for the day François will take his adoptee to the vineyards.

I was allowed to feed Frisette once but the little lamb isn't so much a fan of grandmothers, apparently. She returned to François immediately after the bottle was empty and together they went on their after-dinner-walk.

In honor of Frisette we will produce a new Rosé in our 'Tradition' line this year.

Old vineyard

We have been wanting to integrate a very old and overgrown vineyard right next to our Syrah for a long time. At last our neighbor answered our supplications and sold this wild piece of land. Our employee Pierre-Yves still knew the grape variety from the old times: it's Aramon, an old variety that went completely out of fashion.

It likely came from Spain and and used to be the dominant grape variety in Languedoc. You could say it was every winemaker's favorite because it had an extraordinarily high yield. Exactly the right variety for the mass-produced wines that Languedoc was known for back then.

The sixties saw Aramon declining bit by bit because Languedoc, too, started to look more for quality than for quantity. Today the preferred varieties are Carignan, Mourvèdre, Merlot and Cabernet, grape varieties that we, too, grow at La Grange.

These remaining old veterans will have to go come spring. They will be replaced by Syrah. Not everything that's old is automatically good.

To the moon in half an hour

Unlike the european spacecraft Rosetta you don't need ten years to travel to and enjoy a lunar landscape when you're at La Grange.

At the small town of Mourèze, about half an hour away from La Grange, you can admire a bizarre moonscape, formed over thousands of years from the native limestone. This place is of a strange beauty, in many ways not unlike the pictures we get from Rosetta.

Another sensational discovery: various caves and huts prove that this lunar landscape was evidently home to humans over thousands of years.

Today, even modern communication is possible here. Armed with a portable phone you can easily stay connected to the outer world.

Immigrations issues at La Grange

These days we read about problems with increasing immigration and the flood of new refugees in every newspaper. This problem has now reached La Grange. Only in a different form:

The butterfly Paysandisia archon came to the winery on silent wings last year and and pleased us with his elegantly colored wings. We chased after each one of them and photographed them tirelessly.

Paysandisia archon's wings are so powerful that you can hear a slight whoosh when he bumbles by your ear. His home is South America and he could only be admired in France on very rare occasions and in very few places. Like La Grange. How wonderful!

What we didn't know is that Paysandisia's larvae eat... not grapes like the vinegar fly that is giving german winemakers a hard time at the moment. No, this beautiful butterfly's larvae need harder stuff: they eat palm trees! And they found the big palm tree in front of our holiday appartments a special treat. In an very short time they shredded it's interior.

Our palm tree sadly hung it's fronds and would probably have gone to kingdom come, had not François, one of our employees, put an end to the tragic drama. He was adamant and fought back with the requisite pest killer. Now our palm tree wags a pretty welcome to our holiday guests once again.

Sometimes you just have to prioritize. And we are clearly on the side of our native palm tree.