Promoting Roussillon wines

Guillaume Rebière | 6/10/25, 9:01 AM

The globe-trotting Bordeaux winemaker loves the richness and diversity of his Roussillon estate. A vineyard from which he knows how to produce highly original cuvées.

When you're a Lurton, it's impossible to hide your Gironde origins, so closely are the name and the dynasty that bear it associated with the Bordeaux vineyards. Without ever denying the pride of his family name, François Lurton has done his utmost to surpass it. The entrepreneurial winemaker has traveled the world: Chile, Argentina, Spain... opening haciendas and bodegas. In France, he has long since moved out of his fiefdom and into the Languedoc, where he has propelled Sauvignon to new heights with his prolific "Fumées Blanches" cuvée. In the Gers, Sauvignon and Gros Manseng, of course! In Roussillon, he cultivates his difference at Mas Janeil, a nugget in the heart of the famous Agly valley terroir, which he explored with his brother Jacques in the mid-1990s. He first found a tenant farm, which he bought in 2008 and transformed: a modern winery was quickly built, with the intention of revealing a remarkable parcel of land.

In this superb landscape, the estate covers 200 hectares, including 34 of certified organic vines, with a diversity of soils and favorable exposure. Of course, the Agly valley is renowned for its natural sweet wines, consumption of which has been falling inexorably for several decades. François Lurton continues to produce a maury, but is convinced of the potential of the region's dry wines. "In my opinion, Roussillon is even more of a white terroir than a red one", assures the explorer, who doesn't hesitate to plant unusual grape varieties here: chardonnay, viognier, vermentino cohabit with grenache or macabeu. experimentation is also the order of the day, both in cultivation practices and in the winery: sulphur-free vinification, co-fermentation, ageing in amphorae... Mas Janeil is a laboratory of innovation from which other estates benefit.

The wide range of wines reflects the intrinsic quality of the local terroir and this unrestricted creativity. A blend of monoterroir cuvées and blends: le Pas de la Mule" and "Traou de l'Ouille" stand alongside the original "C2" (co-fermentation of syrah and viognier, rapidly aged in amphora), "Autentic" (sulfur-free) and "Sarou de l'Ouille". (sulfur-free) or "Sarrat del Mas", an orange wine that might seem to be giving in to fashion, but reveals a fine balance between roundness and freshness. The "Le Petit Pas" cuvées open the range with wines for great pleasure at a low price (€12.90). Almost all the wines remain very affordable (around €20). And as François Lurton is faithful to the roots of the estate, he has launched a vermouth that embodies the elegance of maury, enriched with natural alcohols of citrus fruits, Mediterranean herbs and aromatic plants. His range of vermouths has been named "Léonce", in homage to Léonce Récapet, his great-grandfather and an inventive pioneer in the art of distillation. His name wasn't Lurton, but it could have been...

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