Domaine Berthoumieu

Rows held in conversion

At the edge of the rows, Claire Bortolussi works as winemaker at Domaine Berthoumieu in Maumusson Laguian. She co-owns and co-leads the estate from Viella, where her station has been fixed since 2017 and the work now sits inside an organic conversion. The estate itself is older than any current hand on the property: founded in the 1850s, rooted in the Rivière-Basse, and carried through a modern handover that asked for continuity rather than rupture. Claire has described the first years as a period led by emotion, before the domaine settled into its present discipline. That sentence matters because Madiran does not reward haste. Tannat asks for structure, patience, and a clear reading of the fruit before the cellar makes its mark. The predecessor’s work remains part of the house’s line, not as nostalgia, but as a standard the current bench has to meet in vineyard decisions, blending, and the shape of the wines. Claire’s own account of the range is plain: one Madiran more accessible and softer, another more concentrated, with length on the palate.

Old vines, Tannat, and the blend

The estate farms 25.5 hectares, with vines from 10 to 100 years old, across clay-limestone parcels and zones of rolled gravel. That spread gives the cellar more than one register: younger vines can bring lift, older vines can carry density, and Tannat supplies the frame. Cabernet Franc, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Fer Servadou sit in the blend as balancing tools, not decoration. In this appellation, the question is rarely whether the wine has power. The work is in where that power lands. Claire’s softer Madiran and more concentrated Madiran answer that question in different proportions, one leaning toward immediate ease, the other toward length and grip. The house also works within Pacherenc du Vic-Bilh country, so the program is not only red wine; still white, rosé, and dessert styles belong to the estate’s wider bench.

The cellar beside the Gers

The place is quiet in the way working estates are quiet, with the vineyard setting doing more of the speaking than the room. Domaine Berthoumieu sits on the edge of the Gers, in Gascon country, where the scenery is not arranged for effect. The tasting room and cellar belong to a rural property built around plots, vine age, and the practical rhythm of estate wine. Visitors meet the wines through a standard tasting or an estate tour, but the center of the house is still the agricultural fact: rows in different soils, old trunks in Madiran, and a cellar asked to keep structure without hardening it. The texture is classic rather than designed. The bench is the vineyard.

A house kept in the same line

It is a historic estate, small in scale, with a winemaker naming a shift in the method rather than selling a reinvention. Claire’s next work is already visible in that conversion, because it changes how the rows are farmed before it changes how the bottle is read. For now, the line to hold is the one between softness and concentration in Madiran AOC.