Matassa

Tom Lubbe came to Calce in 1999 for a three-month stage at Domaine Gauby, and he never really left.

He grew up between South Africa and New Zealand and learned to make wine at Welgemeend in Paarl under Louise Hofmeyr: indigenous yeasts, low yields, no argument. In Calce he worked three vintages in the Gauby cellar, two of them also at Le Soula. In 2000 he made a wine in the Swartland under The Observatory label, later credited as one of the sparks of the Swartland revolution.

Matassa began in 2001, when Tom and Sam Harrop bought a single high plot of old-vine Carignan on granite in the Fenouillèdes. More plots followed, and Harrop later left the project. Tom married Nathalie, Gérard Gauby's sister, and they made the 2003 vintage in their living room, for want of a cellar. A year later Gérard handed them the old Gauby cellar.

Today the domaine farms about twenty hectares near Calce and Espira-de-l'Agly and up in the Fenouillèdes. The vines are sixty to well over a hundred years old, many of them the old Catalan grapes planted together as field blends: Grenache Gris, Macabeu, the two Muscats, Carignan, Mourvèdre and Lledoner Pelut. When Tom bought Mas Ferriol, he pulled up most of its vines and kept about a hectare on a rare black schist, turning the rest of the land into a mixed farm.

The farming is certified organic. Biodynamics has taken second place to Tom's real passion, cover crops, which he credits with bringing his wines down from 13.5% alcohol in 2005 to about 10.5% by 2018.

In the cellar, everything ferments on native yeasts. The reds get a gentle whole-bunch infusion rather than a long maceration. The whites have seen skin contact since Alexandria in 2008, the first macerated Matassa white. Old oak is there for air, not structure, and no sulphur has been added since 2015. Nothing is fined or filtered, and every wine goes out as Vin de France, by choice. The house sums up its aim as pale reds and dark whites.

A three-month stage, more than a quarter of a century ago.