Nicolas and Marie-Astrid Bourget, who originally hail from the Nantes region, decided to move away from their hometown after spending ten years working as special education needs teacher and chef, respectively. In 2019, they settled with their family on the beautiful island of Paros, where they began planting their first vines on 1.4 hectares of land in 2020. These plots are cultivated using organic farming methods. In addition to their own land, they also rent a few parcels of old vines in the mountains and collaborate with small farmers who cultivate without pesticides and work the soil with tiller and pickaxe.
In 2021, they released their first vintage, consisting of three white wines and a red wine, all made exclusively from grapes harvested from the island of Paros and picked by hand. The soil on the island is varied, with different types of bedrock such as granite, gneiss, and limestone/marble. The sandier soils can have varying levels of iron content. The Aegean Sea and the Cycladic winds are major contributors to the unique flavor profile of the wines, imparting fresh and iodized notes to the whites. The altitude terroirs, with vineyards at 500 meters above sea level, lend a touch of Loire notes to the red cuvée Nees Rizes.
All the wines are fermented using indigenous yeasts and aged on lees. They are unfined, unfiltered, and bottled in the spring. The estate’s philosophy is to produce wines that are as true to the terroir of Paros as possible, with minimal interventions except for the use of sulfur in small doses. The 2021 vintage cuvées contained between 20 mg/l and 45 mg/l of total sulfur.
