Simon’s long-time passion for wine is undoubtedly a welcome inheritance from his father, who was raised in France and was thus schooled and immersed in the culture of wine.
A confirmed “terroirist” – firmly believing that wine quality is essentially down to the quality of the grape and that is in turn down to providing the correct soil, weather, geographical as well as a host of other environmental factors for the vine, he was more and more drawn to the Languedoc where it became clear that there were some truly outstanding sites with unparalleled potential. These pockets of “terroir” provided a far better opportunity to create extraordinary wines than perhaps some of the better known more commercial wine producing regions.
The property is roughly divided by 15 hectares falling into the AOC Faugères appellation and the remaining 9 hectares as AOC Pézenas Coteaux de Languedoc. The Faugères vineyards are of pure black and grey schist whereas the Languedoc vineyards yellow schist have a slightly higher clay content offering a contrast of more fruity wines against the spicier elegant wines from the Faugères vineyards.
Simon’s wines are made with great care from extremely high quality hand-picked grapes grown on these low yielding (20-30HL per hectare) rocky schist vineyards. Following a natural approach to wine making, temperature is strictly controlled during all phases to eradicate unnecessary use of additives, but ensuring clean wines exhibiting pure fruit characteristics.
