Domain Roc des Anges
- country
- France
- region
- Roussillon
- vineyard area
- 40 ha
- Floor
- Granite, slate, clay
- Grape varieties
- Carignan, Grenache, Macabeu, Syrah, Serine, Mourvèdre, Muscat Petit Grain
- Management
- Biodynamic
In the winter of 2001, at the age of 23, Marjorie Gallet decided to start a winery. Without a penny in his pocket, and in an area whose reputation was completely in ruins at the time: Roussillon, a mass wine region whose vines were uprooted with the help of EU money in order to curb overproduction. And this despite the fact that the most diverse terroirs in all of France can be found there.
At the time, Marjorie was working in Calce with Gerard Gauby, the pioneer of the Biodyn movement, when she discovered this special mountain with the white vein at the summit of Montner, the local pronunciation for Mont Noir.
This unique location is located in Catalogne, the northern side of the Forca Real mountain, whose former name was Roc blanc - referring to the eponymous white vein of pure quartzite rock, surrounded by black, 570 million year old weathered slate. Soft as slate flakes, it surrounds this topographical feature that today symbolizes the name of the winery. This peculiarity seemed angelic to Marjorie, so she decided to rename the Roc blanc to Roc des Anges, the mountain of angels, which the bright glow of the quartz vein in the sunlight reminded her of.
Rich diversity of soils
According to Marjorie, the diversity of the soils is what makes Roussillon so fascinating; granite, lime, clay and slate offer a variety like hardly any other place in France. At the beginning she worked sustainably, but then quickly switched to organic farming until Bureau Veritas certified the domain as a biodynamic farm in 2011.
The soil and the vines, the majority of which are ancient Carignan, Grenache Noir and Syrah as well as the rare Granche Gris and Macabeu for the whites, are the domaine's great assets. The average age of the sticks is 75 years, the youngest are three years old and the oldest are well over 100 years old. Due to the immense sunlight in summer, they were planted in a northern orientation; the black, weathered slate soil is vertically layered here and allows the vines to have particularly deep roots.
The Gallets' life takes place mainly in the vineyard
Old and gnarled vines, with a density of up to 10,000 vines per hectare, are characterized by the barren environment, which is extremely hot in summer, with low but highly aromatic yields of an average of only 17 hectoliters per hectare. Due to these limited quantities, all decisions in the vineyard must be well thought out. According to Marjorie, this is where the further development of the wines is decided: the time of harvest according to gustatory ripeness, resulting in the decision as to which grapes are selected and which are selected and which are blended. She is convinced that any wrong decision would be irrevocably reflected in the quality of the wines.
On the one hand, this is consistent, because the Gallets' life takes place predominantly in the vineyard, with the vegetation cycle firmly in their sights. But these decisions are also due to the limited technical resources.
The old winery had concrete tanks and an old vertical basket press, that was pretty much it. The rest is low-tech. Marjorie or Stéphane are always there when the grapes are accepted. They insist on inspecting all the grapes themselves, eliminating the soft grapes because they believe they cannot produce a strong wine.
The wines of Roc des Anges
Very little happens in the basement itself. Marjorie explains her working method as follows: observe, taste and then wait until the wines' terroir is fully expressed.
The musts are fermented in concrete and take a few days for fermentation to begin. During this time, the grapes are gently reassembled to ensure a particularly gentle extraction of fruit and color. Once fermentation has started, the musts are no longer touched. Only in this way, says Marjorie, can you get the fine fruit of the wines that runs through the entire collection - bright and clear, like the angels up in the mountain.”
