domaine l’épicurieux
Sébastien Congretel
régnié
Beaujolais - France
story…
After years working in a successful career on oil rigs Sébastien made his way to Beaujolais to become a vigneron. He & his wife, Charlotte, who he married in 2011 made the move to Régnié where she was from shortly before their first son was born. Although it wasn’t until 2016 that Sébastien fully left the oil business to work fulltime in wine. Between 2011 & 2016 they spent much of their downtime visiting his in-laws vineyards. Sébastien’s decision to leave the oil industry coincided with his wife finishing her degree oenological studies. For the first few years they borrowed space & equipment at Charlotte’s father’s cuvage in Lantignié to produce their wines. They now have their own facilities near their home in Régnié.
Early on much of their influence & guidance came from Charlotte’s dad who makes wine from the family holdings in Lantignié. In a stroke of luck Sébastien made friends with a couple of other young up & comers in Beaujolais, Julien & Antoine Sunier; with whom he had purchased both his parcels of vines in Régnié from. Sébastien credits the brothers, particularly Julien, with being the biggest influence on his philosophy as well as his mentors when it comes to his farming & wine production methods.
The domaine was named after the Greek philosopher Epicurus who was known for teaching that the object of life is balanced pleasure derived from tranquility & harmony.
philosophy…
Sébastien has known from the beginning that he wanted to farm organically, but has since been delving into biodynamic practices. At the heart of his farming, as well as wine production, he is looking to work as cleanly as possible. Although he isn’t fully practicing biodynamics, yet, he considers the moon cycles of the utmost importance when it comes to decisions made in the vineyards & cellar. He employs cover crops in his vineyards & lightly plows throughout the season to aerate the soil & remove bad weeds.
Continuing with the vision of working as cleanly as possible his cellar work is rather simple & basic. All of the wines are produced in nearly the same fashion. They are all carbonically macerated with 100% whole clusters, fermented on indigenous yeasts, & only has tiny amounts of SO2 added to them at bottling & sometimes at racking. There is no new oak in the cellar, most ferments take place in cement & to a lesser extent barrels. The wines are aged in a mix of cement tanks, neutral old wood barrels & large demi-muids.
Vineyards…
The domaine consists of 2.5 hectares of vines that they own & farm themselves. Just over half of it is located in Beaujolais-Lantignié, the remainder is split between their parcels in Morgon & Régnié.
Régnié
two parcels in the lieu-dits of Les Bulliants & Les Perras located in the sandier area of Régnié that were purchased from Julien & Antoine Sunier | planted in ancient alluvial soils over granite | 150 masl
Morgon
a parcel of vines in the Les Charmes lieu-dit planted in 1956 | planted on a gentle south-facing slope at 300-450 masl | pink granite soils
Beaujolais-Lantignié
a 1.7 ha parcel of 60 year old vines | planted on blue volcanic stone called diorite & granite subsoil | 450 masl
