genesis
Genesis of a family adventure
Arnia is a Provencal winery whose origins go back to the early 2000s when my father and I decided to plant our first parcels of Clairette and Syrah right at the bottom of the hills of the villages of Bonnieux and Lacoste in the Luberon.
We are driven by the desire to propose a new model of territorial development and have an immense passion for wines produced in the Rhône Valley, in south-eastern France, between Lyon and Avignon. Day after day, Arnia is built in the heart of the region, which every evening appears sunny on the weather forecast map.
Arnia is a collective project led by Michel Blanc, who was born and raised in the country of Apt, a Roman city whose ancient theatre was at the time at least as large as that of Orange in northern Vaucluse.
After his studies, Michel was recruited by the winegrowers’ union of the Châteauneuf-du-Pape appellation, where he still works in addition to his occupations in the Luberon. Châteauneuf-du-Pape, a vineyard blessed by the Gods where Grenache reigns supreme over twelve other grape varieties.
Arnia is a project that was built over time and effort, sacrificing holidays and family life. A project driven by the pride of bringing back life to wasteland plots, to abandoned terraces. Biodiversity protection, territorial development and slow tourism are all motivating factors involved in the construction of the Arnia project.
We hope that our wines will live up to the expectations that have inspired us on a daily basis over the past two decades.
So let’s talk about our territory as it is today. We could start by talking about our illustrious neighbors, directors, actors, film producers, ministers, presidents, couturiers, singers. . . We could quote the poets and the writers who have lived here to describe what we feel in the morning at sunrise, at noon at the top of the heat, and of course in the evening when only the song of cicadas resonates such as: Henri Bosco, Albert Camus, Jean Giono, René Char, Pierre Magnan, Frédéric Mistral and, well before them, François Petrarch, Italian poet and humanist.
Many painters have also left their mark on the cultural history of our country: first and foremost Picasso and Cézanne, as well as Nicolas de Staël, Victor Vasarely, Jorge Soteras, Auguste Chabaud, Pierre Ambrogiani, Frédéric Gore, Rahim Najfar. . . And, last but not least, let’s not forget about the peasants who maintain the landscapes, sculpt the hillsides, color the plains of their crops. The artists who produce food for others, open their homes, share their meals and bottles of wine, deliver their products to local restaurants.
« … Je t’offre des coteaux de vignes, de lourdes grappes de raisins, des figues sucrées, l’eau vive jaillie de la fontaine, d’innombrables chants d’oiseaux, des gorges sinueuses, des refuges bien abrités et l’ombre fraîche des vallons humides »
François Pétrarque
