France

Growing up on his family's Languedoc estate in the 1970s, Olivier Jullien was surrounded by farmers using questionable practices to deliver enormous yields of sub-standard fruit. While many of his own generation turned their back on farming, Olivier harnessed the unseen potential of the ancient clay and limestone terroirs on the rocky Terrasses du Larzac, 40km inland from the Mediterranean.Plots have been pulled up to replant vegetation and restore the balance of the local ecosystem and, with his detailed knowledge of local soils and a traditionalist approach to winemaking, Olivier crafts exhilarating, long-lived reds from Carignan, Mourvèdre and Syrah – in recent years, exclusively from vineyards around the village of Jonquières – as well as a little white from rare old parcels of Carignan Blanc and Chenin Blanc.No other estate, not even neighbouring luminaries Grange des Pères and Mas de Daumas Gassac, has done as much as Mas Jullien to reimagine the Languedoc as a fine wine region.

Mas Jullien

Wines

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