The Story:

The journey to the wines that you can now taste at Domaine de Chemins de Bassac doesn’t start with the generations of a family going back to the 19th Century; it doesn’t even start in France; it starts with a young architect in Sao Paolo, Brazil, going to his doctor to complain of pain from persistent migraines.

Bruno Trigueiro takes up the story: “The doctor listened, but at the end, he didn’t send me to a chemist; he told me to change my lifestyle. For three months, I avoided all processed foods, I took exercise, I didn’t drink alcohol, I slept following the rhythms of daylight and nighttime, not using unnatural lights. And the pain gradually got less frequent and went away.

“But I was still working as an architect, doing a 2 hour commute in the car, into the office for the traffic in Sao Paolo is bad; life in the city was compressed. My wife and I thought, we must do something different. I did have a link with France from earlier in my life and we thought, ‘Yes, wine,’ so we looked for a property all over – in Provence, the Cote de Rhone and Beaujolais – but we’re happy to have settled in the Languedoc.”

It was a massive move for a family with two small children, but it was a project that he believed in.

“When we got here, the vineyard was already biodynamic [Remy and Isabelle Ducellier, the previous proprietors, were one of the first to go biodynamic in this area] but to me, that didn’t feel enough.”

They arrived in 2016, and by 2019, they had started making their wine in a fully natural way and now they are producing the most extensive range of natural wines in the Côtes de Thongue. In fact, he feels that their own vineyard brand doesn’t sit so easily under the Côtes de Thongue label, so he’s moving it to Vin de France exclusively from next year.

So when you taste here, you are aware that you’re not just tasting individual wines. You are tasting wines made in a particular way, with a particular view of life and nature.

“I do intervene, but a minimum. Every intervention you make, you are taking off something. You lose that primary feeling of a recently made wine. Actually, nature wants the fermentation; it wants to. There’s something close between the fermentation and the winemaker. I must listen to my grapes, not like a mad professor, but rather to see what nature can do, instead of me doing it.”

Working in the church, I am used to listening to people describing a religious conversion, a conversion to God. Bruno is certainly not describing a religious experience, but his conviction, his sense of turning point in his life, his passion for what he is doing now compared with what he did before (and remember, natural wine making is very difficult, even harder than ‘traditional’ winemaking), is akin to that.

But what of the wines?

There’s no question they are distinctive. There are some which are almost ‘traditional’ in flavour, such as their grenache mourvedre syrah blend, ‘Saga Rana’ (Price Band C), but some are utterly different from the stuff ‘conventional’ producers are making here. ‘Les Champs de Maurs’ (Price Band C), for example, is a 100% cabernet sauvignon, but with a lively zing to it that isn’t like any other local cabernet (or any ‘typical’ cabernet at all, for that matter). His Sans Script viognier (Price Band C) is barely like a viognier at all, much more lifted and surprisingly mineral in taste. A really good representative example of the range is ‘Raiz Rouge’ (Price Band C). The blend – of grenache, syrah, mourvedre, cabernet sauvignon and pinot noir – is essentially one he inherited from the previous proprietor but this is definitely more forward in flavour, fresher and fruitier; it’s excellent. The Pleine Terre Syrah (Price band D) is also a gorgeous wine, so light and bright, given its grape variety and context. Or for a rosé, consider ‘L’Incandescente’ (Price Band B), made from straight syrah and ever so light in the mouth.

The wines aren’t all hits here, and to taste natural wine when you aren’t used to it is a challenge. Happily, Bruno is generous about his methods. “I believe in it, but there is room for everyone.” While ‘Sans sulfites’ wines are more common, he just points out, “Sulphites are the tip of the iceberg.” Bruno is only a few harvests into a long career. It will be fascinating to watch this vineyard develop.