A great new wine is born ...

from very old roots ...

Some of the world's best red wines come from Gigondas and, in early 2010, we seized the opportunity to put together some vineyard parcels with the potential to make a wine that would be one of the very best - the proverbial "bees knees".

Imagine a wine that is full and rich, deep in colour, soft and silky in the mouth, with a bouquet woven from the scents of Provence and a harmonious blend of complex flavours that lingers long. Such wines are made from the generations-old Grenache vines of Gigondas. Rooted deep in the rocky soils they yield only modestly, but of grapes with great concentration of flavour and finesse. Grapes that, in the hands of an experienced and sensitive winemaker, produce top quality wines. These are the vines, 100-year-old Grenache, Mourvedre and Cinsault, that we found at St Jean, in a terroir of clay and broken limestone on the south and west slopes of the Dentelles de Montmirail.

These are vines that were planted by the grandfather of Jean Baptiste Meunier, one of the leading Gigondas winemakers, whose family has made Gigondas wine at La Gardette for five generations. When the chance came to buy this very special parcel of old vines, just next door to the vineyards of La Gardette at St Jean, the opportunity was just too good to miss. We intend to select the best, flavour-concentrated grapes from from these old vines in the St Jean vineyards to make a truly remarkable wine.

Our first harvest will be in 2010, these pages will chronicle our progress, keep you in touch with the news, and enable you to buy directly some of this very special wine.

Why "Genua Apiculae"?

Well, this will be a very special wine, the best of the best or, as the old saying goes, "The Bees Knees". The village of Gigondas has ancient roots that date back, at least, to Roman times, the surrounding countryside has produced grain, fruit, olives and, of course, grapes for centuries. We thought it appropriate, therefore, to use the Latin name for our very special "Bees Knees" website in memory of those Romans who, no doubt, enjoyed the wines of Gigondas so long ago.