Château Pesquié

The Free Bacchus Story

Frédéric Chaudière did not convert Château Pesquié to biodynamics. He converted a fifth of it, and waited to see whether the vines noticed.

The experiment began in 2015 across twenty per cent of the estate, with a question specific enough to answer: would the roots go deeper. They did. By 2018 the whole estate was farmed to Demeter standards and certified, on top of an organic certificate the first blocks had earned back in 2007.

Ventoux is the reason to bother. It is the high, cool corner of the southern Rhône, sitting under a mountain that drags cold air down over the vineyards at night, so Grenache and Syrah here hold their acidity where the same grapes forty kilometres west in Châteauneuf turn broad and warm. Fresher, lighter on its feet, and a good deal cheaper. Chaudière reckons close to a third of the independent estates in Ventoux now farm organically, and expects that to pass half before long — unusual density for an appellation most drinkers could not place on a map.

The certification covers the whole hundred hectares rather than one flagship bottling — rarer in the southern Rhône than a label tends to suggest.