Close your eyes, you're in the Eastern Pyrenees! When he took over the family estate in 1993, first renowned for the quality of its natural sweet wines, Georges Puig decided to convert part of his vineyard to organic farming. It was a successful gamble for Georges, whose aromatic palette of wines is an invitation to travel.
Anecdotes about the domain
The wine that resembles me the most? The cuvée Le Fort Saint Pierre. This wine, fruit of my creation, is bottled every year. Why Fort Saint Pierre? It is the cadastral name of the domain. I like to let the terroir express itself when I create a wine. The wine that most resembles our family would be the dry white wine, called "Vi rançi". It represents the accumulation of the past time. The barrels are very old and I have the will of a direct grandfather, Petri Puig, who passed on his wines, silver cups to drink the wine, and his wine vessels, in 1437. To be a winemaker is to be present from the planting to the tasting. I produce, vinify, bottle, manage the accounting, welcome visitors to the domain... but what a pleasure! As a teenager, I used to sneak a little sweet wine directly from the barrels to share with my friends. My wine is different from the others, by its unique taste coming from the so atypical soil that is the Aspres. I enjoy my job as a winemaker because planting vines is a positive action, it is a creation. I like the novelty, that things move forward.
The domain's short story
The origin of the estate is known by several acts since the 11th century, and the family has been on the same estate since the beginning of the 15th century (before 1435). At that time the property produced olive oil and wine. The first known taxation of the estate dates from 1497. In the 19th century, the cultivation of the vine replaced that of the olive tree despite the destruction of the vineyard by phylloxera in 1878. In 1993, I took over the family property in Passa and part of the property in Castelnou. It is the duty to preserve this family heritage that pushed me to take over the estate. In my grandfather's time, the post-war period was marked by the arrival of chemical products, which the following generations have tried to reduce and which I try to fight as much as possible. Until then, the domain was mainly known for its old vintages of Vins Doux Naturels. I have developed the marketing of dry wines. Since 1996, a part of the production is made in bio.
The winemaker's pride
The Puig Parahÿ Estate is a family estate that has been handed down for 19 generations. It is located between the Mediterranean Sea and the Canigou Mountain in this region called the Aspres. Its stony clay-limestone soil gives the wines very marked salt and iodine peppery aromas. The estate is divided into 10 hectares of organic vineyards and 76 hectares cultivated conventionally. The weeding is done with the help of a dethatcher for the organic vines and the whole vineyard is ploughed.
Pictures of the domain
