Domaine des Mathouans

Terroir

The Domaine de Mathouans is located in the South of France, in the village of Latour-de-France, the heart of the Rousillon region. Surrounded by mountains, the Agly Valley offers the perfect climate and terroir for vineyards.

Aline Hock and her husband have been running the 12-hectare domaine since 2008.

“We set our time by the sun and the weather, good or bad.”

A firm believer of bio-dynamic farming, for Aline, making natural wine is a philosophical choice. She aims for finding the natural expression of the terroir cultivating typically indigenous grape varieties like Macabeu, Grenache, Lledoner Pelut and Carignan. Among the old vines – some of them reach 100 years – she lets her ewes, geese and hens graze around, promoting biodiversity. She uses herbal teas to avoid vine treatments, ploughs the soil with horses and harvests only by hand.

Vinification

Aline keeps her natural principles in the cellar as well. Showing respect for the grape, she only selects healthy ones which are then aged in oak barrels and fermented only with native yeast. She bottles her mono-varietal wines unrefined and unfiltered, only with the addition of a small amount of sulphur – sometimes none!

Miss Hock relies on intuition in her winemaking methods, which are “influenced by the moon, rather than technology.” We wish to live through many moon cycles with Domaine des Mathouans’s devine vin naturel!

Origins

Originally from Belgium, Aline comes from the banking world and escaped to the picturesque French countryside from Luxembourg. She fell in love with the area while on an internship for her oenology degree, she purchased the first hectares back in 2008.

Aline’s love for movies shines through her choices of playful labels which embrace just as funky natural wines. Her unfiltered, cloudy rosé and orange wine, as well as reds have a distinctive barnyard aroma, induced by the floral and natural diversity of a bio-dynamic, lively vineyard.

Domaine des Mathouans website