Domaine Galus
Wine, Fanette Fessy and her companion Jean-Baptiste Paquet, fell into it when they were very young. He grew up with parents and grandparents who were wine growers in the Mâconnais; she, in a family of producers and traders from Beaujolais.
Studying in the city of Orange took them away from their region of origin and introduced them to the south of the Rhône Valley: it was love at first sight. They were thinking about settling down and were prospecting near the Dentelles de Montmirail until a friend directed them towards the Costières de Nîmes, promising them “very beautiful terroirs” and “an appellation of the future”.
The large rolled pebbles from the Pazac plateau, which have the particularity of storing heat during the day to release it at night, thus promoting the maturity of the grapes, finally convinced them. In 2002, they recovered six hectares of vines under lease and as many under ownership. An old agricultural shed is transformed into a winery.
However, the beginnings were delicate with two years of small harvests, the fault of the floods of 2002 and the heatwave of 2003. Never mind, they undertook, armed with a pioneering temperament, to restructure the vineyard, which would be converted to organic in 2009, and released their first vintages.
Wines “made to be drunk”
These take advantage of a vineyard divided into five communes to play on the differences in terroir in order to offer blends that give balance to the wine. In terms of style, we are talking about wines “made to be drunk”, with a lot of freshness.
In total, five vintages including three from Costières de Nîmes: two in red (Galus and G.) and one in white (V), which can be found in Nîmes, at Gard Ô Vin or, in Paris, at Les Caves in Prague or at the restaurant Le Boudoir among other addresses.
Among all the estate’s references, vintage V (pronounced “five” because it is the Roman numeral) is the youngest because the 2017 vintage is its very first. Made from a blend of Roussanne (for aromas) Grenache (for roundness) and Clairette (for freshness), it is a white which reveals a fresh and complex wine, which Fanette Fessy suggests discovering – wink look at its origins – with a Bresse chicken with morels or an old Comté!