Jean Velut

In the late 1960’s, Jean Velut & his wife, Huguette, had to give up their farming land near Troyes as the city expanded. The family had some land in the nearby village of Montgueux. They decided to work towards developing a viable vineyard there. They started planting and farming some small vine parcels: their first harvest was only 639 kg.

Nowadays, their son, Denis, is responsible for the vineyard. He farms about 7.5 he...

The hill of Montgueux borders the Paris basin. The soil has a calcareous nature: about 600 meters deep in chalk. In summer, this keeps freshness and moisture, the heat is stored between seasons, and the rain is well drained in winter: the vines thrive best in the southerly and east -southerly sunny slopes where they are planted.

Within a couple of hours of being picked whole grapes are poured into a modern press. The air chamber within this cylinder is inflated and the grapes are slowly pressed.

The pressing produces ‘must’ which over a period of 24 hours naturally decants and clarifies: (operation called “must settling”). The alcoholic (grapes’ sugar is naturally transformed into alcohol) and malolactic fermentations take place in tanks. At each step, we move the ...

We feel this vintage 2014 sooo good!! We really appreciate it, especially after the stressfull 2013. The grapes are pretty abundant, with absolutely NO trace of disease...it's almost a dream ! Only the weed control takes us quite a lot of time...driving at 3km/h, we need 4 full days to cover all our surface. It's almost 3 times more than destroying it chemically, but the impact on water is not really the same...

The sprayers are runnin...