Château Maris

The Free Bacchus Story

The winery is built out of hemp. Not clad in it — built from it, in blocks of hemp straw bound with lime and molasses, across a 9,000 m² cellar that took eight years to put up. The blocks hold the building between 11 and 17°C all year without heating or air conditioning.

Hemp takes up carbon as it grows and the lime keeps absorbing it as the blocks cure, so the structure stores carbon instead of having cost it. That is the reverse of how a cellar is normally built, and it is why the estate is one of very few wineries anywhere described as carbon negative.

Robert Eden set Maris up in 1997 with the American financier Kevin Parker. Ecocert certified the farming organic in 2002, and it became the first estate in Minervois La Livinière fully certified biodynamic — Biodyvin in 2004, Demeter in 2008. In 2016 it became the first B Corp certified winery in Europe.

The wine most people meet is La Touge, a Syrah at around thirty dollars, which took Gold at the International Wine Challenge.

That price is the point. The Languedoc is the largest wine region in France by volume and spent decades living down a reputation built on bulk. Thirty dollars is roughly what a competent supermarket Languedoc costs, and this is what the money now buys.