Domaine Puig-Parahy
Cotes du Roussillon
Roussillon, France
Recommended by Wine Advocate, Revue de Vins de France, Le Point
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A sense of extraordinary history pervades the wine estate of Georges Puig today. Georges himself was baptised in a bowl of Carignan juice during the harvest of his birthday in September 1971 in the vineyards above Passa. Records show that a direct ancestor of Georges, Etienne Puig, owned vines here 500 years ago. So it would appear the Puig Parahy families have been producing wine around Passa, a tiny village of 500 people located 25 km south west of Perpignan in the heart of French Catalonia, for 500 years. Georges himself is an endearing mix of modern and old…
Georges lives in his large, rambling, historic and decidedly museum-like family house at the centre of the village which was recently the setting of a Spanish film starring Victoria Abril. Under the house are large stone and concrete vats filled with wines and old barrels everywhere. They house a treasure of the oldest known collection in the world of Vin Doux Naturel, which is today AOC Rivesaltes. Amazingly, these wines are still in barrel because the family would sell most to negociants and always keep their favourite wines. Since 2001, they have been bottled little by little. It is a fairly awe inspiring sight to see these barrels marked 1940, 1910, 1898, 1875…!
Until 2001, the wines were sold in bulk and the unique collection of Vin Doux Naturel was almost completely unknown. Now, a range of wines is reaching a wide audience, and have received brilliant press both in France and overseas. Several of the wines are made exclusively for The Vine.
While Georges is curator of an extraordinary heritage, the last 20 years in the Roussillon have been tough and he struggles with a dilapidated cellar and the endless difficulties of finding labour to manage his vineyards. On the other hand, because of this, his vineyards became organic by default because he couldn't afford to treat them and the vines old because he couldn't afford to plant new vines. Now he is consciously working them organically and is having them officially certified as organic.
The estate is quite large with 110 hectares of mainly very old vines, most of which are between 60 and 80 years old with the oldest being 130 years old, the first to be planted after phylloxera. The soils are mainly limestone clay but there's a good amount of schist here, too. Both types give the wonderful and surprising freshness which underpin Georges' wines.
With such concentration and balance coming in from the vineyard, Georges' main goal in the cellar is to do nothing to change that in the winery. With his minimal facilities and size of harvest, he's rarely able to do anything to the wines anyway other than keep them healthy. This is stressful for Georges but good for the wines… There is occasional destemming, occasional temperature control and occasional extraction by remontage and pigeage but the main thing is simply racking off the skins early to preserve the purest fruit.
Wines produced by Puig are 100% estate grown, vinified and bottled
The Vine Ltd is sole and exclusive distributor in Japan and imports directly from Puig by reefer container
