“It had been written in our names and distributed around the village, including the local shopkeepers, to be put in their windows,” says Katie, an Englishwoman from Leicestershire with sparkly eyes and a big, glowing smile. Perhaps the most vindictive part of the leaflet were the lines that asked locals to use an indelible marker pen to sign their names on “the stones on the façade of the newly renovated winery”, a painstakingly restored old train shed.
Luckily Katie is the sort of woman who can take such setbacks in her stride; she’s had to be as the 23 years she’s spent living in the wilderness of the south of France sound less rose-tinted Peter Mayle, more Cold Comfort Farm crossed with Wuthering Heights, with (I think she would argue) a touch of Manon des Sources thrown in. And good wine – her own good wine.
A Francophile first and oenophile later, Katie took her first job in wine in the early Nineties, working for British-based importer Thierry’s, because “I just loved France. It was a way for me to get back there.” She spent a holiday visiting some of Thierry’s suppliers and ended up at the Mont Tauch cooperative down in Tuchan, where the director offered her a job. “I’d read Manon des Sources, and imagined myself as a shepherd girl in a rural French village. I loved that you’ve got real farmers with strong accents, not corporate men in suits.”
So she moved to the scrub-covered hills of the Languedoc-Roussillon. Mont Tauch – in Fitou – had just moved from selling all its wine in bulk to bottling, with a view to capturing more discerning drinkers abroad and Katie spent the next 15 years there building up sales and helping to put Fitou on the map.
Creating higher-quality levels of wine involves policing the quality of the grapes, and arguments between growers and the co-operatives could rapidly turn bitter, with threats of violence common, though Katie only experienced this enmity directly when she began to make wine herself.
Becoming a vigneron was accidental. “My parents wanted to own a few rows of vines so they could tell their friends” – so in 2008 Katie went hunting and found a 2.5ha patch of old vines high up in Maury, surrounded by crags and looking across to the ruins of the Cathar Château de Queribus, and bought it. The initial plan was to leave Mont Tauch to set up an agency, and sell the grapes (grenache gris, muscat, grenache noir and carignan) to the cooperative.
But at some point she had also fallen madly in love, with Jean Marc Astruc, then-director of the cooperative, and he said: “Why don’t you give up the consultancy and have a go at your own wine?” So she did.
The first vintage did well in wine competitions and was scored highly by Robert Parker’s taster for southern France – Katie was off. Eighty per cent of Fitou is everyday wine made by co-ops; Katie’s ambition was “to show there is another style that can be made” and she was serious about it. She began to specialise in small patches of old vines, planted on slopes so steep and rocky no one else wanted them – too much work. “I’d go back to Jean Marc and say, 'The view’s amazing,’ and he’d say, 'Did you look at the vines?’ ” she says, self-deprecatingly.
Over eight years, Domaine Jones hoovered up 25 plots, covering a total of 12ha in Fitou and Maury. It has been a journey of ups and downs. Some hostilities – nasty emails, targeted vandalism – can be ignored but in 2013 Katie and Jean Marc returned home from a trade fair in Germany to find a saboteur had broken into the winery and opened the valves, pouring away the entire vintage of white wine. Naked Wines came to the rescue; their Wine Angels pledged to pre-order her 2013 vintage, providing cash flow and moral support.
Not all of Languedoc life is so tricky. Katie and Jean Marc got married last year – “He made a bench in one of the vineyards, took me up there one evening, with candles and proposed.”
There are also plenty of friends among the neighbours. And the wine – Domaine Jones makes very special wine; textured, enveloping and evocative, “Ah, that smells of home,” says Katie, a smile spreading across her face as she sticks her nose in a glass of 2013 Domaine Jones Fitou.
Creating higher-quality levels of wine involves policing the quality of the grapes, and arguments between growers and the co-operatives could rapidly turn bitter, with threats of violence common, though Katie only experienced this enmity directly when she began to make wine herself.
Becoming a vigneron was accidental. “My parents wanted to own a few rows of vines so they could tell their friends” – so in 2008 Katie went hunting and found a 2.5ha patch of old vines high up in Maury, surrounded by crags and looking across to the ruins of the Cathar Château de Queribus, and bought it. The initial plan was to leave Mont Tauch to set up an agency, and sell the grapes (grenache gris, muscat, grenache noir and carignan) to the cooperative.
But at some point she had also fallen madly in love, with Jean Marc Astruc, then-director of the cooperative, and he said: “Why don’t you give up the consultancy and have a go at your own wine?” So she did.
The first vintage did well in wine competitions and was scored highly by Robert Parker’s taster for southern France – Katie was off. Eighty per cent of Fitou is everyday wine made by co-ops; Katie’s ambition was “to show there is another style that can be made” and she was serious about it. She began to specialise in small patches of old vines, planted on slopes so steep and rocky no one else wanted them – too much work. “I’d go back to Jean Marc and say, 'The view’s amazing,’ and he’d say, 'Did you look at the vines?’ ” she says, self-deprecatingly.
Over eight years, Domaine Jones hoovered up 25 plots, covering a total of 12ha in Fitou and Maury. It has been a journey of ups and downs. Some hostilities – nasty emails, targeted vandalism – can be ignored but in 2013 Katie and Jean Marc returned home from a trade fair in Germany to find a saboteur had broken into the winery and opened the valves, pouring away the entire vintage of white wine. Naked Wines came to the rescue; their Wine Angels pledged to pre-order her 2013 vintage, providing cash flow and moral support.
Not all of Languedoc life is so tricky. Katie and Jean Marc got married last year – “He made a bench in one of the vineyards, took me up there one evening, with candles and proposed.”
There are also plenty of friends among the neighbours. And the wine – Domaine Jones makes very special wine; textured, enveloping and evocative, “Ah, that smells of home,” says Katie, a smile spreading across her face as she sticks her nose in a glass of 2013 Domaine Jones Fitou.
Three wines to try from Katie
Domaine Jones Blanc Grenache Gris 2014 Côtes Catalanes, France (13.5%; The Wine Society, £13.50; £90/case of six; domainejones.com)
A layered white from the first vineyard that Katie bought with her parents and also the wine she lost in 2012 when vandals opened the taps on her vats. It’s diffuse, diaphanous and herbal, like a cloud of perfumed summer air. About 10 per cent is matured in old oak – you can’t taste it but it adds texture. Utterly beautiful.
Domaine Jones 2013 Fitou France (14.5%; The Wine Society £13.50; Fareham Wine Shop £15.25; Campbells of Leyburn, £15.99; Nethergate Wines, £15.99; £81/case of six; domainejones.com)
Katie’s top-end fitou: a fine, atmospheric red made from carignan from 100-year-old vines, grenache and syrah, with gentle oak and is open and rustic, all savoury undergrowth, figs, and a blissful sensation of depth and lightness at once. “Ah,” says Katie as we taste, “This smells like home!” Love it.
Domaine Jones Muscat Moelleux 2015 France (11%; Naked Wines, available to Wine Angels only at £11.99 for 50cl)
A gentle, sweet muscat, fragrant like sweet peas and freesia, and without the heaviness or the oppressive perfume you find in some muscat wines. “I didn’t want to make a wine that was too overpowering,” says Katie. She hasn’t.
To access the online article, click here
A layered white from the first vineyard that Katie bought with her parents and also the wine she lost in 2012 when vandals opened the taps on her vats. It’s diffuse, diaphanous and herbal, like a cloud of perfumed summer air. About 10 per cent is matured in old oak – you can’t taste it but it adds texture. Utterly beautiful.
Domaine Jones 2013 Fitou France (14.5%; The Wine Society £13.50; Fareham Wine Shop £15.25; Campbells of Leyburn, £15.99; Nethergate Wines, £15.99; £81/case of six; domainejones.com)
Katie’s top-end fitou: a fine, atmospheric red made from carignan from 100-year-old vines, grenache and syrah, with gentle oak and is open and rustic, all savoury undergrowth, figs, and a blissful sensation of depth and lightness at once. “Ah,” says Katie as we taste, “This smells like home!” Love it.
Domaine Jones Muscat Moelleux 2015 France (11%; Naked Wines, available to Wine Angels only at £11.99 for 50cl)
A gentle, sweet muscat, fragrant like sweet peas and freesia, and without the heaviness or the oppressive perfume you find in some muscat wines. “I didn’t want to make a wine that was too overpowering,” says Katie. She hasn’t.
To access the online article, click here
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