Our wines
The Owners
We are Catherine and Patrick and our passion for wine led us to Combebelle with its potential to produce exceptionally high quality wines from grapes cultivated naturally in truly beautiful healthy surroundings. Using our combined experience of the wine trade and international business we aim to become recognised as one of the top five producers in St Chinian. We are introducing new styles of high quality wine reflecting more the fresh, bright, attractive character of the region, including a lively fruity rosé for early consumption the summer following the vintage.
We are passionate about our environment and will work hard to maintain and protect the natural habitat surrounding our vineyards.
Catherine's Story
Catherine has had a long held dream of one day becoming a Master of Wine and owning her own vineyard in France when at the tender age of 8 or 9 years old she read part of Hugh Johnson's World Atlas of Wine and fell in love with the idea of wine, travel and more! Soon after this, with the help of her parents, she started to find out more about a career in the wine trade and had her first “interview” with Tim Ferguson at Lay & Wheeler when she was 14 hoping to get a job with them over the busy Christmas period! Alas, the UK law would not allow someone under the age of 18 to work in the drinks industry!
However, this did not deter her and when she reached 17 she found a summer job at Brandeston Vineyards in Suffolk. Much to her teacher's horror she had no intention of following her class-mates to university but instead embarked on a 2 year training period working on vineyards in France and Germany immediately following school. She attended and passed the Wine & Spirit Education Trust exams up to and including Diploma and then embarked on the Master of Wine course. She is still working on this but hopes to finally achieve success in 2009!
Catherine has spent more than 15 years in the wine trade working in France, Germany, Holland and UK where she worked for Majestic Wine, La Vigneronne (now Handford Wines), Adnams and Lay & Wheeler.
The story continued…
It is nearly 3 years since we have been at Combebelle. Our wines are selling well, especially in Japan, UK, Sweden & Denmark – in fact, we are selling all that we produce at the moment which is great but we never rest on our laurels and will continue to develop & strengthen our markets to ensure this continues. New markets this year include Belgium, Ireland & Canada and we hope to be shipping our wines to the USA & Holland in 2009. Our reputation is growing in France too with the result that we are now working closely with 10 cavistes scattered all over France.
The dream is still alive and strong despite some set-backs at the beginning with regard to the business. There are certainly no regrets! Who would have thought that we would be producing top quality wine, winning medals and travelling across continents to see each other from time to time? Without the support of family & friends this would not have been possible. And we have had the good fortune to make some really nice friends locally.
We are now at the stage where we have reached some of our business objectives and are now looking at how to grow the business even further over the next 5 years. Much of this involves more investment in the vineyard which we are continuing to change and expand. Our grafting project in 2008 has been successful and with effect from 2009 we will have a lot more Grenache to add to our blend. We are still keen to plant white grapes in 2010 with a view to having this in production in 2014 – which seems a long way off now, but time is waiting for no one!
The winery has been changed out of all recognition to when we first bought it and we hope to be able to make the final renovations in time for the 2009 harvest.. Our focus is on using 50hl tanks which corresponds to each of our plots and allows us to vinify the grapes separately giving us more freedom & flexibility when it comes to the final blending. As well as investing in more tanks next year, we are looking to invest in a cooling system and possibly a new (second hand) pneumatic press which is ideal for white & rosé but equally good for red. We will be introducing a small percentage of new oak barrels in 2008 and will continue to invest in wood each year to have a natural rotation of new / old wood. We are also starting to use different types & sizes of barrel to see how our wines evolve.
We have made further changes to the property, improving the barrel cellar (replacing the roof and putting in a giant boule court!) and will finish off the caveau in front where visitors will be invited to taste our wines and to purchase not only our wine but also other local produce from specialists such as Accent d'Oc. We will also have Combebelle honey and in the future we hope to offer our very own organic olive oil! We will plant a small olive orchard in front of the house (a generous & wonderful gift from my parents) so we will keep you posted on when this will be in production – yummy! We would also like to promote some local artists and feature some of their works in the caveau and perhaps do an annual Summer Exhibition combined with a boule competition & BBQ!
Our newly renovated gîte will be available from September 2008 which will sleep 8-10 people. We had our first guests for a couple of weeks in September during the harvest!
Our next project is a “biggie” – we shall start renovating our house in 2009 with a view to completing this in 2010. This will be a major undertaking and although very exciting, will need to be managed well if we are to achieve our deadlines and keep within budget. But having had to do this now for the last 3 years in respect of the business, I feel quite confident of being successfully able to deliver this project on time and within budget (of course, Patrick might be extremely generous & flexible and allow me the odd “extravagance” for the house not actually in the budget!!).
Claudette (John Deere tractor) and Dauphine (Berlingo van) are both in good shape and well looked after! At some point we will have to invest in a small forklift truck to help manoeuvre the pallets of wine around.
Our website is attracting much interest now and we are finally getting our act together with regard to updating it and posting “News of Combebelle” regularly on the site. We are still evolving this and trying to make sure it never feels out of date, as people will lose interest and not return again. The company looking after the site for us have been brilliant and very patient.
We have found small very experienced companies who are helping us in the vineyard. Frédéric does the mechanical work & El-Anzouki does the vineyard manual work, both reliable and excellent at their job. They, together with Bruno (viticulture expert), Jean-Paul (oenologue) and Frédéric P (organic expert) help us to manage the vineyard and ensure that it is healthy and produces a high quality low yield crop at the end of the day! We will still hire a caviste for the vintage period (3 months) and thereafter work with Yohanna who helps me in the winery from time to time. All in all, we have a great team now at Combebelle which has taken awhile to put together, but the waiting was worth it.
Cathy is still working towards the Master of Wine but has not really had a lot of time to devote to study mainly due to the vineyard and travelling, but her tasting is now at a level where she is confident of passing the exam. There is still a long way to go before she will be ready but it is something she would like to do and hopes to achieve in the not too distant future!
