Fanny can you tell us about your family and wine?
François and I are the 4th generation working in the Beaubois vineyards. Our great grandfather bought the estate in 1922 he was the local country doctor and his wife Marguerite looked after the vineyard. My grand parents started modernising the vineyard after the 2nd world war and bottled their own wines, my parents continues until 1998 and now my brother and I are tasked with looking after the vines for the next generation.
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What training do you have in making wines?Â
We have grown up with the vineyard in our blood, François studied for 5 years in Agricultural college and specialised in Viticulture. I studied Oenology, Business and Viticulture. During our training we travelled throughout France to visit and work on different domains, chateaux, and appellations.  After our training we both went to South Africa to work in 2 different wineries to improve our English and experience other working methods of making wine.
 What age did you start working in the vineyard?
As children we always were expected to help out around the vineyard, in 1995 I started working with my mum in the office and helping my father in the cellar. I went to South Africa the next year and on my return I was left alone to manage the cellar. This was a new experience for me and for the first two weeks of the harvest I did not sleep, the vintage was good 1996 and six months later the wines were awarded a gold medal, all the worry, tiredness, patience and excitement was well rewarded.
Fanny you work with different grape varieties, what’s your favourite?
When I started my favourite grape to work with was Syrah, it’s a grape that is easy to work with. Now my favourite is Grenache. It’s a difficult grape sometimes cantankerous, sometimes generous… In the cellar Grenache is full and generous, round rich sometimes like velvet but can be  sometimes like fire. Handled correctly the fruit and spice of Grenache can be developed to age for 10 to 20 years. In the past our best wines were made from 90% Syrah, now we use Grenache more and more as hot days and cool evenings in the region really suit the Grenache grape.
You are very passionate about organic clean wines, what are you doing to fulfil this in Beaubois?
In 2000 we were the first in the region to start integrated farming, and we started a full organic vineyard  in 2009 with 8 hectare, this was increased to 10 hectare in 2010 and by the end of 2012 all will be farmed organically. In France it takes 3 years of working the land organically before your receive an AB stamp (Agriculture Biologique) and you have to do this within a 5 year timeframe.
I strongly believe in this way of agriculture, when you work with the earth you should think about future generations and respect the generations before you and how they looked after the ” terroir” for you. This is the best and only way.
