A brief word: I was led to Maury, in the steeply sloping valley that cradles the region known as the Fenouillèdes, in Roussillon, in the ancient Pays Catalan that straddles the French and Spanish borders near the Mediterranean, by one of my dearest friends. He had bought some land without knowing anything of what he was getting into. Was the land good? What would it bear? How would he farm it?

The vineyard at left was thrown into the sale for free, to get it off the past owner's tax bill. It had been abandoned, left to expire, unpruned, unpicked. One look revealed a Grenache vineyard that had been established four generations ago. We pruned it very carefully in 2005 to bear no fruit, to revive it.

It was so strong. so eager to bear, that we found a few hundred clusters on it at harvest. The fruit was harvested, destemmed and fermented by our friends at the Domaine de la Pertuisane. They have no website, but their wines will be available soon in the US. We tasted the 2005 wine from this vineyard for the first time on our 2006 pruning visit and it was beautiful and pure. We will make our first commercial release of this wine, and wines from the other 2 tiny vineyards, in 2006. The wine will appear under my friend's label, emblazoned with an image of the wild boars that stalk the vineyard. The land is so impressive that in 2006 the Scholium Project will also begin a single vineyard project there, in conjunction with our friends from Pertuisane.