Andrea Calek never intended to work in wine. But a chance encounter with the groundbreaking notorious Gang of Four vignerons (Lapierre, Thevenet, Foillard, and Breton)— some of the first to put into practice the ideas of Jules Chauvet and Jacques Neauport — made him change his mind.
He apprenticed, and ended up in Provence, helping Domaine Hauvette move from organic to biodynamic viticulture. Eventually he landed in the Ardéche, learning from and working with Gerald Oustric of Le Mazel, one of the godfathers of so-called "natural" winemaking in the region.
Calek farms 5 hectares of Ecocert certified limestone clay soil in Alba La Romaine, a lovely valley one bend in the river from Valvigniéres, what the Romans called Vallis Vinaria, ‘Valley of Wine’, because they thought the region, with its soils and its mostly Mediterranean climate, was the best place in Gaul for wine grapes. His painstaking viticulture combined with non-interventionist, laissez-faire vinification has produced some of the purest expressions of Syrah and Grenache in Southern France.
