Domaine du Clos des Fées

Domaine du Clos des Fées was founded in 1998 by Hervé Bizeul and his wife Claudine in Vingrau, a village in the Pyrénées-Orientales at the limestone cliffs marking the northern edge of the Roussillon. Bizeul - born in Perpignan in 1961 - came to winemaking from outside: Meilleur Jeune Sommelier de France at twenty-one, Paris restaurateur, then two decades as a wine-and-gastronomy journalist before buying his first five hectares of very old vines from local farmers. The estate sits at around thirty hectares today, with some sources citing closer to fifty-six if farmed-but-not-owned parcels are included.

Soils are clay-limestone (argilo-calcaire) on hillsides at the foot of Vingrau's blue cliffs, with schist and mica-schist on the Petite Sibérie parcel - exceptionally iron-rich, dark red, layered over the limestone base. Vine ages average around fifty years; oldest parcels run from fifty to a hundred-plus. Bizeul's framework is the "3 V" method: Vieux, Village, Vingrau - old vines, village fruit, Vingrau terroir.

The lineup, from entry to flagship: Les Sorcières, Vieilles Vignes, Le Clos des Fées, Le Métisse, Un Faune avec son fifre sous les oliviers sauvages, and La Petite Sibérie - plus a few whites. The house style works deliberately against the Roussillon stereotype of heavy syrupy reds: ploughed soils, minimal cellar interventions (temperature control, destemmer, one good pump), elegance and finesse rather than muscle.

The name refers to the wild, romantic limestone cirque above the village - a plot Bizeul described as "where fairies would live, if they existed."