The Domaine de la Clapouze of Ardèche of Vin de Pays

You don’t need a state-of-the-art winery to make wine. You don’t need rows of pristine oak barrels. One thing you do need to make good wine is good vines. Have you ever asked yourself where all these vines come from? How do they find their way into the ground? It used to be easy. In the past, winemakers simply took cuttings from their vineyards, propagated them, and planted them in the ground. But phylloxera put a stop to that. What was a simple process acquired layers of complexity: winemakers ...

Our feet crunched through layers of dry oak leaves as we climbed a pebbly path towards the vineyards behind the farmhouse. Roots go deep here. Not just the tall oaks and squat vines, but families too. I walked the vineyards at Mas de Libian with Hélène Thibon, but it was her father Jean-Pierre that greeted me when I arrived. Hélène’s sister Catherine was out front with Bambi the horse, ploughing the sandier plots. Later, we tasted in the winery with Hélène’s son Aurélien. Three generations of a ...

Latour was the 11th generation of his family to lead Maison Louis Latour (and the seventh named Louis Latour). The house of Latour was formally founded in 1797, although the roots go back to the first vineyards purchased in 1731 by Denis Latour. The Latour family originally worked as coopers, and Denis’ son Jean moved to Aloxe-Corton to set up an independent cooperage and later to found Maison Louis Latour, naming the business after his son. The house of Latour remains closely associated with th ...