The HLW Winery of Livermore Valley of California

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 ...

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 ...

Whenever I visit Domaine Richaud, just outside the village of Cairanne, the winemaking team remind me of friends I made at free parties in the 1990s in fields and disused warehouses. I’m not talking dreadlocks and dogs on strings, but there’s always an anarchic frisson in the air. You get the impression they know how to enjoy themselves. Perhaps it’s to be expected, given the radical furrow Marcel Richaud has ploughed. He’s approaching 70 now, but still thrums with pent-up energy, his ice-blue e ...