Domaine Sainte Luchaire

Other little stories

The most exciting moments are the tasting sessions to define the blends of our future wines.
We do this regularly with Laurent, our cellar master. It is a moment of both creation and rigorous analysis of the different wines in order to make the best possible cuvée. It is a moment of magic where one plus one can sometimes make three. Our Cellar Master, Laurent is a pure wine enthusiast who fell into the world of wine when he was a child! He has had a complete career in all areas of wine in all the different French wine regions. Unlike his colleagues, he arrived in this bacchic world by pure passion.
More than a vocation, wine is for him a passion that started from his childhood on March 10th 1978. It was on this precise date that his grandfather decided to pass on his knowledge through tastings of the great classified growths of Alsace and Bordeaux.
His grandfather took great pleasure in putting a little of these great wines in his glass, which he then filled with water. He had the impression that he was drinking wine like the adults! But what he never said was that before, he had already made him taste some great wines in his cellar; away from the curious and especially from his grandmother! He taught her the art of wine tasting by spitting out the wine and how to consume it in moderation.
He guided him towards his future profession and this is how he graduated from the prestigious school of oenology in Montpellier in 1990 (vintage of the century). At the time, he had only a limited knowledge of wine and had to go through an apprenticeship phase. Not only did he have to acquire a global knowledge of the world of wine, but he also had to retain a lot of details about soils, winemaking techniques, grape varieties and regions.

In the beginning, he read a lot of professional publications, worked and travelled all over France (Alsace, Champagne, Southern Côtes du Rhône, Loire Valley, Burgundy, Beaujolais) doing all the jobs related to wine. Versatile, he has worked as a wine craftsman meeting prestigious vineyards, as an oenologist creating wines rich in sensations, as a Brand-ambassador to share with Asia the singular spirit of French wines, as a buyer to develop the plurality of wines from artisan winemakers. He has visited various vineyards in France and abroad, and has met with terroirs and winemakers who give birth to concentrated sensations and emotions in their wines.

"For me, wine is like an art of living, it is above all the taste of good food, sharing and conviviality around a beautiful table...
I prefer to erase the hermetic and stuffy speeches of old-fashioned sommeliers. I speak and celebrate French wines with passion, preferring lyrical flights of fancy, real-life anecdotes and humour. My daily exchanges are like a shot of happiness, a mix of coolness from my Irish father's side and French glamour from my mother's side.
In 2020, I went back to where it all started in Languedoc-Roussillon at Domaine Sainte Luchaire. The first vintage was not so simple but I consider that wine is a piece of music composed above all by nature and I must know how to interpret it. My wish is to capture the spirit of the wines of Domaine Sainte Luchaire and humbly write, vintage after vintage, wines of emotion and authenticity in the respect of the terroir. From 2021, the results were not long in coming and already the medals!"