Domaine Garrabou, a beautiful discovery in Limoux

Frederic Garrabou has just taken over the 22 hectares of family vineyards partly located in AOP Limoux, a magnificent highland located on the foothills of the Pyrenees. A geographical situation and a nature of soils that justify the planting of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, as in Burgundy.

Frederic Garrabou, who has just settled on his own in Languedoc in his native village (while his parents were delivering all their production to the local cooperative winery), presents an impressive pedigree: BTS viti-oeno like many winemakers, in Beaune, where he was lucky enough to have his classes with two local figures: Anne-Françoise Gros, in Pommard, and Jean-Pierre Confuron, of the great Maison Chanson. We saw worse as trainers!

He then moved on to the highly acclaimed National Oenologist Diploma (obtained in Bordeaux in 2010) and then went on to apply his science abroad: for two years, he was a winemaker in Australia, New Zealand (Marlborough), then California (Napa), finally returning to France in 2012 and vinifying as a consultant for various estates in Languedocs (organic for the most part) before finally being able to take over the family property.

The first vintage, 2016, is therefore experimental: 3000 bottles of red and as many white are produced, to see. The rest is sold "in bulk": do not put all his eggs in the same basket!

We were immediately touched by the sober discourse of the winemaker, admired his very open carrer path, heard his passion for the quest for quality (other winemakers speak to us first of all about the selling price of their wine ...). Of course, we were especially impressed by the level of his first vintage, 2016, when nature did not spoil him.

Domaine Garrabou thus seems to have a bright future, and we "bet" on this project as well as on its pretty wines totally unknown, to date (September 2017) distributed by two local wine merchants ... and us! Indeed, all the conditions seem to be united: a very nice clay-limestone soil, located in altitude, an essential condition for the production of fresh and not heavy wines as one can dread in the south, and a winemaker already experienced who masters his subject technically, and who seems to be listening to his terroir, remaining modest facing the stakes that are his.

Needless to say, Domaine Garrabou chose to work under the best practices: manual harvests, indigenous yeasts, strict minimum sulfur, vinification Burgundy style, etc.