“Everything is connected”
In 2019, after thirty years of Parisian life and seven children, we left our offices for a few hectares of gamay and chardonnay in the Côte Roannaise. We wanted a life closer to nature, more respectful of Creation and more fraternal. And that turning point took the shape of vines and wine.
Aude-Reine was born in Paris. A lawyer, she was chancellor of the Diocese of Nanterre. Régis has Bordeaux roots; a journalist, he was editor-in-chief of the news agency of the Missions Etrangères de Paris.
We met at Sciences Po in 1989 and married in 1992. Then came family life in the Paris region: the children, demanding jobs.
All was well, and yet. We had the strange feeling of living cut off from the ground, and we longed for a simpler life.
In 2015, two things moved us: Pope Francis's encyclical Laudato si', on care for our “common home”, and the film Tomorrow by Cyril Dion and Mélanie Laurent. Then came the reading: Pierre Rabhi, Hervé Covès and the life of soils. Laudato si' became our roadmap.
We are only the guardians of the land.Domaine de La Bénisson-Dieu
Before planting anything, we had to learn. In 2017, we earned a vocational diploma in vine and wine at AgroSup Dijon. Learning pruning, soil, patience: starting over, humbly.
In 2018, we set off to see how monks make wine. The Trappist monastery of Latrun in Israel, Georgia, the Mekong valley, Japan, California, then the Abbaye de Jouques, near Aix-en-Provence.
Everywhere, the same lesson: wine is the fruit of the vine and the work of human hands, and it is made with time.
The day we visited the estate in Ambierle, Notre-Dame de Paris was burning. We said yes.
We moved in on 10 August 2019, with our cellar and our house on the slopes of the Monts de la Madeleine, waiting for the time to settle in La Bénisson-Dieu.
When we became winegrowers, we did not want to settle on our own. We needed friends around us. In La Bénisson-Dieu, a village in the Loire about fifteen kilometres from our vines, three young couples founded a Christian eco-hamlet in 2016. We joined them in the summer of 2019, and chose to name our estate after the village of La Bénisson-Dieu, which also gave its name to our community: the La Bénisson-Dieu eco-hamlet.
This beautiful village name comes from a phrase attributed to Saint Bernard of Clairvaux: “This place is the blessing of God!”
We started with 2.3 hectares of gamay saint-romain and chardonnay in Ambierle, at the foot of the Monts de la Madeleine, 400 metres above sea level, on granite. New plots followed: Les Grands Villards, a vineyard near La Bénisson-Dieu and another in Mailly. Today the estate covers 3.5 hectares, certified organic and worked by hand.
Initially in the Côte Roannaise AOP, we then chose to work only as Vin de France, to be free to adapt our vines to a changing climate.
Fruit of the vine and work of human hands.and all our wines are made naturally (Vin Méthode Nature)