The photo above is of winemaker Benoit Arletaz standing in one of his parcels of vines above the village of Opoul-Périllos in the Roussillon that he calls Le Chateau because if you look closely behind him, you can see what are the remains of a 13th century medieval hilltop castle. The parcel contains a field blend of some 100 year old vines, made up of Carignan, Grenache Noir, Gris and Blanc and in spite of Benoit’s best efforts to protect the viens, their remoteness up in the hills means they often fall victim to hungry wild boar and goats.

Benoit is not from the Roussillon himself but comes from a winemaking family just over the border in the Languedoc. His grandmother, Marie, was making her own wine in the 70s at a time when most people sent their grapes to the local co-operative to make the village plonk. In spite of skipping a winemaking generation, Benoit picked up the family winemaking flag in 2007 when he changed from a career as an organic farming consultant to learning winemaking at Château de Gaure in the Corbières. By the end of his seven years with them, he was responsible for all winemaking and had carte-blanche to make them however he wanted, but in 2014 he seized the opportunity to have his own two hectares of old vines around the village of Opoul-Périllos.

The village sits between the mountainous Pyrenees to the south and the rugged hills of the Corbières to the north. His vines are exposed to the maritime influences of the Mediterranean sea only a few miles away and to the Tramontane, which is the wind similar in nature to the Mistral of the Rhone valley but which instead brings much needed cooler air from the north down the corridor between the Pyrenees and the mountains of central France.

Benoit now has around six hectares of vines, most of them more than 60 years old, with some actually planted in 1900. He grows classic grape varieties for the region - Carignan Noir, Muscat, three types of Grenache, Mourvèdre, and Macabeu and makes a selection of reds, whites, plus a rosé. His whites are pressed directly without skin contact while his reds are almost always de-stemmed, not crushed then macerate on the skins for anything from three days to three weeks. Materials of choice for fermentation and ageing tanks are concrete and stainless steel, while he does use neutral barrels and foudres for a couple of his reds. As for sulphur, he’s not against using it but in recent vintages he has only felt the need to use small amounts in some of his whites at bottling.