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.