The Pertuisane story begins in the foothills of the Pyrennées. In 2002, winemaker Richard Case and his wife Sarah staked their future on two hectares of ancient grenache and carignan vines surrounding the village of Maury. Convinced of its truly exceptional terroir, they added eight more hectares in time for the 2003 harvest resulting in the first small run of high-quality, handcrafted wine.

Maury is a remarkable winemaking village in the Catalan region of south-west France. It lies midway between Priorat in Spanish Catalonia and the Southern Rhone Valley and like Priorat and Chateauneuf du Pape its vineyards are dominated by grenache clinging to the barest covering of rocky soil. Maury’s vines, like those of Priorat, grow in schist; coal black and unforgiving. Not much else survives here except for the odd olive, cherry and almond tree and the lowland scrub or garrigue with its Spanish oak, wild rosemary, lavender and thyme. The daytime sun is intense and the heat absorbed by the schist is reflected back to the grapes at night increasing ripeness and reducing acidity. Summers are long, hot and dry and so the vineyards can’t help but produce very low yields of rich, powerfully concentrated wine.

Yields at Pertuisane are extremely low. Vineyards range from 14 to 100 years of age although most are over 50-years-old and produce as little as 8 hectolitres per hectare (less than half a tonne an acre). The vines, gnarled with years of hard pruning, are trained en gobelet, without trellis and hunkered close to the ground on the well-drained hillside slopes above the valley floor. Vineyards are worked and picked manually while late harvesting ensures phenolic maturity and the deep inky colour characteristic of all of Pertuisane wines.

The domaine advocates minimal intervention winemaking. Fermentation is initiated by the wild yeasts naturally present on the grape skins and while the juice is pumped over twice a day, the wine is handled as gently as possible. The wines are pressed off through a traditional basket press before being aged in new and second-year French oak barriques. In line with Pertuisane’s winemaking principals the wines are neither fined nor filtered prior to bottling. The resulting wines show great complexity, concentration and finesse and have built up a cult following in the UK, USA and beyond.