2021 Catherine Bernard ‘L’alicante’ Alicante Bouchet

Catherine Bernard was a journalist for Libération in Paris and later Montpellier, but at 40, newly divorced with two young kids, she felt the pull back to the land she grew up on in Brittany. So she changed course entirely, earned her viticulture and oenology qualifications, and went searching for a small vineyard where she could make something real with her hands. She eventually found it in Saint-Drézéry, Languedoc: three hectares of limestone-and-clay soils dotted with big pebbles, and a single hectare of Grenache vines and its lesser-known hybrid, Marselan. For years she vinified in friends’ cellars until she built her own tiny, gravity-fed chai in 2015... a space inspired by Australian architect Glenn Murcutt and designed to let her work gently, intuitively, and alone despite her son jumping on board in 2018. Catherine often describes Languedoc as “the forest of France, the land of freedom”, a place where vines have a long history but wine has fewer rules... and that freedom is exactly what shows in her work.