Domaine de la Goguette is a brand-new winery, founded in 2020, by vigneron Julien Mary. After several years of travel and hitchhiking around various countries, Mary decided to return to his home region of the Gard to train to become a winemaker. It was with the excellent Nicolas Renaud of Le Clos des Grillons, in Rochefort du Gard, that Mary found his mentor and teacher—he worked at the domaine for five years. Now, Mary is set up in Tavel on the banks of the Gardon River, with lots of room to experiment and grow his own wines.

To begin the project, Mary leased a little over 2 hectares of vines, mainly of Syrah and Grenache; the parcels are on mixed soils of silt, clay and limestone. Farming practices are founded on ‘respect for the plant,’ with gentle pruning in winter preserving healthy flow of the vines’ sap, as well as aiming for longer life for the vines overall. Mary leaves the soils spontaneously grassed throughout the year and plans to sow annual legumes and grasses in order to establish plant cover, decompacted and well-draining soils, organic matter over time, and a living flora to feed surrounding wildlife and insects. Mary also brings sheep into the vineyards during winter to weed and provide organic fertilizer. He strives to use as few antifungal treatments as possible, while keeping a watchful eye to prevent any diseases from spreading in the spring. The eventual hope is for Mary to be able to plant his own vines, as well—he’d like to be able to co-plant trees and other plants, as well.

This project also has breathed new life into a dormant cellar in the heart of the village where he’s working—a cellar that used to be occupied by Domaine des Cabotines. The young vigneron is determined to make healthy wines expressive of their place: no factory yeasts, low to no SO2 additions, no sterilization or filtration during vinification. The wines are macerated via either semi-carbonic or carbonic fermentation, and are then matured for several months in stainless steel tanks and neutral barrels.

We’re very happy to add Domaine de la Goguette to our portfolio of French producers. In the southern Rhône and perhaps Tavel in particular, there’s an emergent movement of excellent young wineries making fresher, more vivid iterations of the native varieties and climes (we can probably thank Eric Pfifferling of L’Anglore for this!). Especially given that this area occasionally has been written off as the domain of overblown Grenache, we’re very happy to be on the receiving end of the trend of excellent new wines from the area. Welcome, Julien Mary.