On the steep schist terraces overlooking Banyuls-sur-Mer, Le Casot des Mailloles has spent three decades proving how vivid wine can be when nothing is added to it.
Backstory
Alain Castex and Ghislaine Magnier created the domaine in Banyuls in 1994. Castex had spent some fifteen years working in the Corbieres before moving to Roussillon, where the couple built a pioneering natural estate. In 2015 they handed the work over to Jordi Perez, a young Catalan who had left a town-hall job to study viticulture and oenology at Blanquefort. He continues the domaine in the same uncompromising spirit.
The Region
The roughly five-hectare estate sits on steep terraces above the town of Banyuls, in the Roussillon. Its name comes from the casots, the traditional dry-stone shelters scattered across the region's vineyards. The parcels are so steep that machines cannot work them.
Vineyards and Farming
Farming is organic and biodynamic, with cover crops, agroforestry plantings of olive and almond trees, and pastoralism among the vines. The work is done by hand on the terraces.
Winemaking
Wines ferment with native yeasts. They are never fined or filtered, and sulfites are avoided entirely, a discipline the domaine has held to from the start.
The Wines
The range covers white, rose and red bottlings, including Collioure-area cuvees, made from the Mediterranean varieties of the Banyuls hills. They are wines of energy and transparency that helped define what natural wine could be in southern France.
