LA ROCALIERE
Visit the Estate
THE VINEYARD
The vineyard covers about forty hectares divides as follows:
20 hectares in the Lirac appellation located in the communes of Lirac and Saint-Laurent-des-Arbres.
20 hectares in the Tavel appellation spread over the 3 Terroirs of this appellation: limestone slates, pebbles and sands.
2 hectares vinified in Vin de France located in the town of Pujaut.
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The average age of the grapes is around 30 years old. Severine and Melanie work both goblet vines over 40 years old and recent plantations, established on double wire.
Anxious to preserve what they consider to be heritage, the management of the vineyard is done with the greatest respect for the environment. Each intervention is reasoned and measured. When the vegetation awakens, observation dictates their various actions throughout the campaign.
The management of the vineyard in organic farming and is principally based on anticipating the weather. This requires a permanent presence near their vines and to listen attentively to their terroirs. Chemistry is excluded, meaning that the defence of the vines is based on natural products and human intervention alone.
SEVERINE & MELANIE
La Rocaliere is a family estate. It was founded by Severine's and Melanie's father, Jacques Borrelly and their grandfather Armand Maby.
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Since 2009, Severine and Melanie, have been managing the estate upon their father's retirement. They are particularly careful to maintain a human-scale operation. Most of their work remains manual.
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Harvesting is done by a team of seasonal workers who regularly return to their plots and know their quality requirements in order to remove unwanted bunches.
In the spring, the plots are debudded by this same team to allow better ventilation of the bunches, to avoid their compaction and the formation of foci conducive to the development of diseases. The pickaxe remains the essential tool for clearing the planters of invasive weeds...
The work in the cellar is done in the same spirit. Winemaking requires a constant human presence to observe, monitor and carry out simple but essential operations every day to make their wines.
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