It began in 1980 when Henri Carrette, then a farmer-sharecropper, managed to buy the land. His son, Jean-Michel, built up the winery to its present size and still works manually in the vineyards though he is near retirement. His wife, Denise, works part time when needed. Henri (now eighty-four) and his wife still live next to the winery and, though of course retired, frequently welcome guests to taste the wines.

Jean-Michel’s son Hervé now runs the estate together with his wife Nathalie, who did her studies in Oenology and Agronomy at the National School of Agronomy of Montpellier. Hervé approaches wine making more or less as a farmer, caring for the vineyards throughout the year: pruning, uprooting and replacing dead vines, working on grass and pest management, and coordinating the harvest. Nathalie, in turn, takes the greatest of care at every stage of the process to ensure excellence from vinification to aging, blending and the final bottling. It’s a fascinating combination with both a peasant farmer perspective as well as a highly sophisticated technical one.

In the early days, almost all the wine was sold in bulk. Henri began to bottle some of his wine in the ‘70s, before becoming owner of the estate. But bottling only began seriously in 2008. That said, they have a large collection of all vintages going back to 1976.

The Carrettes work very carefully in the vineyard and depending on weather conditions they prefer to protect their plants with organic products and use traditional plowing to improve air circulation. They make every effort to minimize their impact by avoiding herbicides and chemical fertilizers and  working instead with natural fungicides. The conversion to organic viticulture officially began in 2020, and the estate will be officially certified by 2023.

In the cellar a cold soak and soft press aim at bringing forth clear fruit aromas. Spontaneous fermentation on native yeast (primary as well as malolactic) add extra complexity to their wines. The wines then age on their lees and are bottled in spring for the fresher wines and late summer for the more characterful Le Crays and Les Mures.