Camille Nosworthy

Domaine Saint Amant

Region :
Vallée du Rhône
APPELLATION :
Beaumes de Venise, Côtes du Rhône, Côtes du Rhône Villages

Anecdotes about the domain

What I appreciate most is the variety of work: in the vineyards, in the cellar, in sales - but not the administrative side! Each year is different and no two years are alike and that's great! The encounters in the wine world are all as rich as each other: professional and individual; the interest, the curiosity, the emotion that a glass of wine can arouse pleases me!

The domain's short story

A high altitude domain in the south. Superb site overlooking the Rhone valley, with a breathtaking view of the Dentelles de Montmirail, the Mont Ventoux, the Vaucluse mountains, the Luberon, the Alpilles... The terroir is composed of small terraces on hillsides, on a mixed soil, stony and/or marly scree, chaotic, complex, some veins of which date back to the Triassic period (120 million years ago) at an altitude of 400 to 600 meters. Half of the vineyard is planted with white viognier grapes with a little roussanne. The reds are AOC Beaumes de Venise. It will soon be 25 years since my parents, Jacques and Nathalie Wallut, left Paris to settle in the small village of Suzette, which they had discovered some twenty years earlier. Active and creative, they founded the Saint Amant estate by buying vines left and right and replanting Viognier, the emblematic grape variety of Condrieu to which my father has a fetishistic cult. They are accompanied in this process by a renowned oenologist from Chateauneuf du Pape: Noël Rabot. From 0 hectares in 1990, the estate has grown to 13 hectares in 2015, including 5.5 hectares planted with Viognier. The modern cellar, buried, equipped with a cold unit, and where the grapes are vatted by gravity, was built in 1995, and the first vintages were born that year. It was time to start selling... The whole family started to sell, and that's when I got a taste for the complex - but very satisfying - job of winemaker. In 2002, I became the manager. It was great!

The winemaker's pride

In 1990, her parents left Paris to found the Saint-Amant estate in the small village of Suzette. In 1995, the first vintages were born, and it was in that year that Camille developed a taste for the profession of winemaker. She became the manager of the domain in 2002, and produces high altitude wines with a different balance from those of the plain, more on the roundness than the power. The wines are greedy, easy to drink and, at the same time, age superbly.