Charles and Guillaume Soulier grew up watching their father farm 40 hectares in the Gard, between Avignon and the Pont du Gard. He eventually stopped, but in 2015 the brothers came back for four of those hectares, determined to do things differently. Neither had been born into natural wine, but both arrived at the same conclusion: the land needed to be listened to, not managed into submission.
Backstory
Charles studied viticulture and enology at the Montpellier agronomy school before spending time in conventional cellars. Guillaume trained as a landscape gardener, and it shows in how he thinks about the vineyard as an ecosystem rather than a production unit. They founded Les Freres Soulier in 2015 in Saint-Hilaire-d'Ozilhan, a village in the Gard an hour west of Avignon.
The Region and Vineyards
Their estate now covers 10 hectares, planted on old limestone soils with rounded river pebbles characteristic of the southern Rhone. The brothers work without ploughing, instead applying annual compost and woodchip mulch. A horse, ten goats, and ten sheep manage the ground cover between rows, keeping the soil alive and the chemistry balanced. Farming follows permaculture principles, which the brothers arrived at after letting go of biodynamic certification.
Winemaking
The Soulier cellar is deliberately simple. Grapes are hand-harvested and pressed in a century-old vertical press. The brothers use a technique they call la trempouillette, a variation on carbonic maceration in which whole-cluster juice is combined with direct-press juice before fermentation. Wines ferment on gross lees in old barrels and age without racking or pumping. Nothing is fined, nothing is filtered, and no sulfur is added at any stage.
The Wines
The range includes La Clastre, a site-specific Syrah from old limestone; L'Oume, a light red blending Grenache, Syrah, and Cinsault; and a blanc de noir made from Grenache and Cinsault. The wines are built on freshness and restraint, showing the lifted character that old limestone soils in the Gard reliably produce.
