Our wine estate in the Luberon, the birthplace of our red, rosé and white wines
Arnia, an estate located in the Luberon region,
welcomes you to the land of the perched villages and blue skies, a land of mixed cultures and brewing, where a thousand-year-old way of life has been brought to this day by the wine and olive cultures.
The vineyards of the Arnia estate extend over 15 km, in the communes of Bonnieux, Goult and Oppède, between Apt and Cavaillon, two cities founded by the Romans and located along the Via Domitia that has connected Italy to Spain for more than 2,000 years.
The estate consists of 12.5 hectares of vines, including 5. 2 ha of AOC Luberon, 6 ha of AOC Ventoux and 1.3 ha of Mediterranean PDO.
Thanks to the diversified 14 Mediterranean grape varieties available, our ability to create multiple cuvees, while respecting the characteristics of each terroir, is extremely large.
So, it is possible that from one year to another, you will not find the same assemblages. Baron Pierre le Roy de Boiseaumarié, the world’s leading winemaker, affirmed that the French were not made for standardized production, that their genius was elsewhere. On our small scale and in all humility, we will try to pay tribute to him by giving priority to creation over standardization.
Birth of a family wine estate in Luberon
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.
Unique terroirs in the heart of the Luberon to shape our red, rosé and white wines
In the commune of Bonnieux, the vines are planted on soils made of stony materials but often covered with fine materials (silt and alluvium).
Opposite, on the hillsides, the geology is more complex. On the top of the hill of Goult, we find platelet limestone in which there are fish deposits. Just below, the substratum consists of the red sandy marls with limestone pebble beds from the Eocene.
On the terraces the soils are formed of the red sandy marls of the Eocene, with strands of calcareous pebbles, and colluviums.
Further west, in Oppede, on limestone “molasses” of the Lower Miocene, is a clayey horizon surmounted by fairly resistant sandstones of the Middle Miocene. My heartfelt thanks go to Georges Truc for these valuable geological descriptions.