Les Petits Ducs Cote Du Rhone GSM

Mourvedre, Cinsault, Shiraz/Syrah, Grenache

Very intense ruby ​​red color, on the nose aromas of black fruits, spice and liquorice, with a light floral note. In the mouth we find the black fruits in a jam version, and the note of pepper. Soft and rightly tannic.

For us (Saskia Leal Keijzer and Maurice Goetschy), the peasant adventures began in 2019.

Before that, we lived and worked in Luxembourg. That’s where our law studies, our penchant for foreign languages ​​and our European spirit led us. That’s also where we met and where our two children, Felix and Alma, were born. We didn’t intend to become winemakers.

Actually, maybe a little bit. ​

Saskia was born and raised in Andalusia, in the province of Malaga, to a Dutch mother and a Spanish father, and her grandfather was a wine merchant there.

​Maurice was born and raised in southern Alsace, where his grandfather was also a wine merchant in Altkirch.

​In the mid-1990s, Saskia's parents, Els and Ramon, decided to buy an old farmhouse in Occitan Provence. The house was sold with a few hectares of vines in vin de pays. This may have been what made their decision.
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We know relatively little about the older history of the Château de Boucarut and its adjoining chapel, except that the oldest buildings date from 1758 and that it was probably the property of a clergyman.

Lovers of the arts, literature and good wine, Els and Ramon set about restoring the splendor of the Château de Boucarut and the chapel in which Els organizes concerts every year.

At the same time, Els and Ramon equipped the estate with the essential wine-growing tools. For 25 years, they would cultivate the vines and vinify the grapes at the estate in order to hand over most of the production to the trade. Their objective was then to maintain and foster the historic wine-growing activity of the estate.

In 2017, plots of vines adjoining and historically part of the Boucarut estate were offered for sale. Destiny then providentially struck us and we decided to change our lives.

Château de Boucarut now has 20 hectares, including 15 hectares under cultivation, gathered around the property. Half of the vines are in AOC cru Lirac and the other half in vin de pays. To this is now added a small plot in AOC Cru Tavel of half a hectare located in the terroir of Vestides to the west of the village of Tavel.

Without any real knowledge, training or experience, we took the gamble of becoming peasant winegrowers by actually carrying out all the tasks on the estate with the help of a small team.

To preserve both the wealth of this enlarged estate and our well-being, we immediately committed all of the vines to organic farming.

The cultivation of vines and the foundation of a sustainable agroecological estate is a long journey. We are delighted to have to patiently work on this, for us, for those who appreciate our wines, and for those who, we hope, will continue after us to bring this place to life by sustainably registering it in the culture of vines and wine production.

The Château de Boucarut and its vines are located in Roquemaure in the Gard, at the crossroads of several regions and cultures, on the right bank of the Rhône and in the heart of the southern Côtes du Rhône where vine cultivation dates back to antiquity.

The soils of Boucarut are mainly made up of sandy hillsides formed by the retreat of the Rhone, more or less mixed with scree of rolled pebbles that were torn from the sides of the Alps and polished by the Rhone. The subsoil is made up of successive layers of sediments deposited by the inland seas of the secondary and tertiary eras.

Our Tavel plot is located in the Vestides terroir to the west of the village of Tavel and is made up of slate (limestone scree).

The climate is Mediterranean with few maritime influences apart from the Mediterranean and Cévennes episodes at the end of summer.

The Mistral blows often and strongly. Summers are hot and dry, with often significant temperature variations, and winters can be cold.

With the exception of a small plot of Tavel, the Boucarut vines are all located around the estate. These are medium to small plots, located in relation to the buildings: on a plateau to the northwest, on a hillside to the southwest and on a plain to the east.

The landscape is marked by the presence of numerous hedges and groves, which naturally gives the estate an agroecological configuration. These hedges and groves make mechanized work less easy and require specific maintenance, but they create a varied landscape and are very favorable to biodiversity. However, beyond organic farming, we are precisely seeking to promote biodiversity in the soil and above ground as much as possible.

To this end, we maintain a partial plant cover in the vines, including in spring and summer, which is most often reviled in Mediterranean viticulture because of the competition between the vine and other plants. However, on the surface, such a cover helps protect the soil from solar radiation in summer. It also provides shelter for fauna and auxiliary microfauna that helps limit the proliferation of so-called pest insects. This cover also promotes underground life, by structuring it and providing organic matter when it decomposes. Finally, the depth of a wine begins, in our opinion, with the complexity of the environment in which the vine is established.

We are also looking to reduce doses of copper (which can accumulate and harm soil fungi) compared to the legal standard in organic farming.

Finally, we seek to limit the use of tractors. Harvesting, topping, pruning and disbudding are therefore done by hand.

To date, our vines, with the exception of those of Tavel which are in goblets, have been planted in cordons de royat, a pruning designed to facilitate mechanical work. For our future plantations, our wish is to resort to training in goblets which is more respectful of the needs of the plant.

Finally, we now favor the use of plants from mass selections rather than clones and are experimenting with co-planting to limit the creation of sources of sensitivity to cryptogamic diseases.

The miracle of wine is due to grapes and yeast. Together, they make wine.

We believe, like many winemakers, that the quality of the wine depends first and foremost on the quality of the fruit.

Furthermore, since the vine can take root very deeply, it has the particularity of expressing itself differently, not only depending on the climate but also depending on the soil in which it sinks its roots.

We therefore seek to obtain a wine that authentically reflects its soil, its climate and the vintage (the terroir). This means that any intervention in winemaking must be thought out in this sense.

This also means that we seek to do without any oenological input or traumatic physical process. These techniques have the advantage of securing oenological processes from a quality perspective but have the disadvantage of standardizing the wines, or even significantly distorting them.

On the other hand, it is extremely perilous to obtain a naturally stable wine and the fermentation, aging and packaging/storage phases of the wine can give rise to aromas and tastes that we consider undesirable to the extent that they risk ultimately dominating and masking the uniqueness of the alchemy between the vine, the climate and the soil and thus giving rise to another form of standardization.

To achieve this balance, we harvest all our grapes by hand, we avoid the use of sulfites as much as possible and never use them before the end of fermentation (the dose is always factually indicated on our labeling), we favor fermentation by indigenous yeasts when the conditions seem right, we carry out rigorous analytical monitoring of our wines, and, finally, we do not fining or filter our wines.
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