Domaine Le Roc des Anges

Old vines under Marjorie Gallet

Whole clusters enter the cellar in 20 kg bins, and Marjorie Gallet, winemaker at Domaine Le Roc des Anges in Latour De France, keeps the work close to the fruit. She founded the estate in 2001 after training at the University of Montpellier, choosing Montner and the slopes between Montner and Latour-de-France rather than an inherited family domaine. The first terms have stayed visible: old vines, old soil, and a method that asks for attention before intervention. The estate works about 40 hectares, mostly old vines, and produces roughly 70,000 bottles per year, a scale small enough for parcel decisions to remain legible. Its ground is the northern side of Força Réal, where schist, gneiss, quartz veining and light topsoil give the wines their line. Marjorie’s role here is not separate from the place; it has been shaped by the same parcels since the beginning. Vieilles Vignes, L'effet Papillon and Alquimia sous voile sit within that practice, names attached to a discipline of restraint rather than ornament.

Concrete, native yeast, old Carignan

The domaine farms biodynamically, with organic and biodynamic practice at the center of the vineyard work. Conversion began with the first vintage in 2001, parcel by parcel, and the cellar follows the same preference for measured handling. Whites such as Llum draw on Grenache Gris, Macabeu and Grenache Blanc, with vines planted between 1919 and 2008. The grapes are pressed as whole clusters, settled without cooling, then fermented on ambient yeasts in 500-liter barrels, mostly used. No SO2 is added during fermentation, malolactic conversion is allowed to happen naturally, and the wine is bottled with low total sulfur, 40-60 ppm. The reds keep a similar logic. Segna de Cor moves through a 7-day maceration in 24-65-hectoliter concrete vats, then 9 months in concrete tanks. Carignan 1903 comes from a parcel planted in 1903 and ferments on native yeasts in cement with whole bunches. The method favors touch, timing and the quiet refusal to overcorrect.

Stone walls between Montner and Latour-de-France

The winery sits on a secluded parcel between Montner and Latour-de-France, built with thick stone walls that help hold temperature without turning the cellar into a machine room. Around it, the vines face north into wind and poor soils, conditions that slow ripeness and keep tension in varieties often asked to carry heat. The room is quiet by nature of the work: concrete vats, used barrels, stone, and the repeated movements of harvest, settling, fermentation and élevage. This is not a polished visitor stage. The tasting room, the home and the cellar belong to the same parcel, so the estate reads as a working site first, with the landscape close enough to set the pace.

The first parcel still sets the tone

The name Roc des Anges grew from Roc Blanc, the white quartz vein cutting through black slate schist on the original vineyard. That first decision still gives the domaine its grammar: mineral pressure, old-vine concentration, and a preference for wines that carry place without weight. If the close of the season leaves a trace here, it is in the cement, the bins and the next bottling of Carignan 1903.