AN ESTATE IN THE LUBERON
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.
Les vignes du domaine Arnia s’étendent sur une quinzaine de kilomètres, entre Apt et Cavaillon, deux villes fondées par les romains et situées le long de la via Domitia, voie qui relie depuis plus de deux mille ans l’Italie à l’Espagne et qui traversait le Calavon au niveau du Pont-Julien au débouché du défilé de Roquefure.
Réparties sur les communes de Bonnieux, Goult et Oppède nos parcelles surplombent donc la vallée du Calavon (on dit Coulon à partir de Robion), capricieux torrent qui prend naissance dans les Alpes de Haute-Provence pour se jeter dans la Durance et la teinter ainsi de ses eaux couleur ocre. Ocre comme le sont les falaises de Roussillon, village voisin, mondialement connu pour sa beauté mais aussi pour avoir accueilli Samuel Beckett pendant la seconde guerre mondiale.
Ainsi notre territoire est une terre de lumière et de biodiversité, une palette d’artiste composée d’horizons bleutés, d’étendues jaunes comme le sont les champs de blé et de tournesols en fleur, de rayures violettes dessinées par les rangées de lavandin, de nuages blancs formés par les cerisiers en fleur et d’une mosaïque brune, verte et rouge lorsque les feuilles de vigne commencent à changer de couleur aux premiers frimas.
Composé de 12,5 hectares de vigne, dont 5,3 ha d’AOC Luberon, 6 ha d’AOC Ventoux (non ne dit plus Côtes… ni pour l’un ni pour l’autre) et de 1,3 ha d’IGP Méditerranée (les anciens vins de pays de Vaucluse), le domaine est à la fois situé sur la partie la plus septentrionale du Luberon et la plus méridionale du Ventoux.
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.
The Calavon Valley, a confluence area
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.
