Description

Anne-Marie Lavaysse started off as an architect, living in a cozy area near Paris. She woke up one day and was bored of the lifestyle and decided to head south!  Prior to settling in Gimios, she had a polycultural farm in the Montagne Noire (in the Languedoc, near Axel Prufer). She had geese, ducks and goats. She is among the pioneers of the natural wine movement. Gimios is a tiny secluded hamlet in the Minervois, high elevation & on limestone. She now works with her son Pierre. In 1993 she bought her first parcel, which was an abandoned vineyard and she put her cow in it to clear the land. For 7 years she pruned aggressively in order to allow the root systems of the vines to reestablish themselves. Her first vintage was 1999, consisting of 3 hectoliters, and to Anne-Marie’s surprise it was good! The INAO (French appellation system to whom all producers have to submit their wine in order to get the appellation) refuses to give her the AOC approval, stating there was a taste of “light” in her wine. In 2000 she resubmitted again and was denied the AOC because the fruit was not oxidized enough for the aoc “Muscat Saint. Jean de Minervois”. In 2001 the local farmers who belonged to the coop tried to ban her from harvesting. She left the coop and decided to make vin de table (a dry muscat & a vin doux naturel). By creating her own wine, she came to like wine. She had a small parcel of red (mostly alicante) and blended it with her muscat à petits grains, put it in a barrel: and produced 200L in 2002. She then looked for red vines, and was able to trade a parcel of garrigue on the aoc muscat that she owned and got the parcel of red fruit in 2006 (coplanted in 1906 grenache blanc, gris & red, carignan, terret blanc, gris & rosé, cinsault, aramon, mourvèdre, alicante, barbarossa, muscat a petits grains. She got the parcel of Rouge de Causse in 2014, pre-phyloxera, planted in 1860’s).