Terroir
From the Alpilles to our Orchards
It is customary in agriculture to name plots of land.
We grew up with these melodious but often strange names with complicated spellings like “Les Grands Drailles”, “Joncades hautes et basses”
for Jean-Benoit and Galéant’s apple trees at Mas Cavalier, and Rose, les Pétarelles for Catherine’s vineyard at Vieux Télégraphe.
These names often come from the locality, like Castelas, but also from the person from whom you bought it, like Roméro, a gentleman we are very fond of. We followed this custom and named our various orchards as follows: Castelas, Roméro, Dominé, Mas de Flore, Jaubert, Plaines de Geymon, Beaumettes hautes et basses, Romanin, Les Baux. We will only discuss the main ones here.
Land of Olive Trees
Baux-de-Provence Valley
A member of the Oleaceae family, known as Olea europea L sativa, it thrives in our Mediterranean climate. A hardy tree, it can withstand the violent Mistral wind and is content with the limestone soil of the sun-drenched Alpilles slopes.
Untamed, nourishing, and resilient, it is also eternal, never losing its leaves and possessing the ability to regenerate itself. It has this capacity to resist the trials inflicted by Mother Nature. In Provence, everyone remembers the terrible frost of February 1956 that devastated the olive trees of the Baux-de-Provence Valley.
The rare surviving trees are recognizable by their unique, gnarled, and highly developed trunks. All the others were coppiced, meaning cut at the base. The main branches, numbering four, five, or even six, have regrown from them and all belong to the same root system.
For centuries, the olive tree has found its chosen land in Provence. It enhances the beauty of a landscape, celebrated worldwide.