Thank you to importer Louis/Dressner for this profile of the Puech Redon estate:

We were introduced to Domaine Puech Redon by Eric Texier, who as of 2017 is helping proprietor Cyril Cuche make unpretentious, unsulfured wines from his meticulously farmed land.

Puech Redon is a large property: in total 380 hectares are split between 200h of cereals, 52h of vines and over 100 of woods and garrigues. Cyril's grandfather acquired this land in the aftermath of World War 2. Under his father, the property was farmed conventionally for 30 years. Cyril, seeing the potential of such a large, contained area, decided from the get-go that it had great potential for organic agriculture and prioritizing biodiversity:

"It was a choice I imposed on myself. Besides the incredible bore of working conventionally, with it's by the book itineraries traced step by step by lobbyists for large phytosanitary corporations, I wanted to prove that within organics, you could work in poly-culture on a large surface and still be profitable. I learned to feed the soil and not the plant, I reclaimed the link that unifies the farmer to his land. The vines have been worked organically since 2008, and the cereals since 2010. Over the last decade I've been able to observe the immense consequences of such work. The effect of a culture without chemicals on such a large surface is truly impressive: for the soil, the plant but even more so the animals that had deserted us slowly coming back to our lands."

For winemaking, minimal-intervention was evident in Cyril's philosophy but not obviously attainable. After a chance meeting with Eric Texier, the two instantly hit it off. Through a bond of shared experience, they agreed to collaborate on the vinifications. In 2017, a limited amount of pet-nat from Cinsault was produced under the name "Pour de Vrai",  a 100% Cinsault called "L'Apparente" and a minuscule amount of white wine from Viognier, Grenache Blanc and Roussanne. While distinctly southern, the micro-climate of the area is actually quite cool and the wines are rarely above 12.5% when harvested at optimal maturity.

From 2017 to 2021, Cyril had been selling the majority of his grapes to a négociant, slowly ramping up estate production every year. But in 2022 he decided to start renting his cereal fields and over 30 hectares of vines, solely focusing on roughly 16 hectares of his best terroirs. Without the pressure to work the rest of his sprawling property, we only expect the wines to become more focused and precise.