Domaine des vignes du paradis

Who: Pascal Durand

Where: Saint-Amour-Bellevue (Beaujolais, France)

What grapes: Gamay & Chardonnay

Key facts: For five generations (since 1864), Pascal’s family, winegrowers from father to son, has been established in Saint-Amour-Bellevue at the Lieu-dit “En Paradis”. This human-sized estate is made up of 5 ha of vines, including 3.5 ha in AOP Saint-Amour, 1 ha in AOP Beaujolais-Villages and 0.5 ha in AOP Bourgogne Blanc.

Website: http://www.saint-amour-en-paradis.com/fr/domaine.html

I think it might have been raining. Jay, Jacques and I were packed into a Citroën ( I like to remember it as a Citroën, it might have been a Renault ). Anyway, we were off for adventure. Jacques Devaux is an amazing winemaker. He has been making wine in the Côte Roannaise since 1996, 1997? We were on a tour that day that did include a giant plate of sizzling grenouilles for me at lunch. What can I say, when in France, il faut en profiter. Where was I, it was raining and we had a hot tip that there was a winemaker in Saint-Amour who was making some pretty stellar wines. Saint-Amour is considered the most northernly of the Beaujolais Crus. It has an immensely vast terroir: clay, veins of granite, limestone and silex. The wines can be light and playful with heady perfume of iris & violet, tangy raspberry. Or you can find wines with power and complexity that taste of spice, meat and kirsch. Within Saint-Amour there are 9 lieux-dits / named sites, and our soon-to-be new friend Pascal Durand of Domaine des Vignes du Paradis has 5 ha of vines, including 3.5 ha in AOP Saint-Amour, 1 ha in AOP Beaujolais-Villages and 0.5 ha in AOP Bourgogne Blanc. 1.5 ha are situated within “En Paradis”.

We knocked on Pascal’s door not knowing if it was his private residence or if it was his winery or perhaps both. Jay remembers that when Pascal opened the door he had an epic mustache. I remember kind eyes and hands that had definitely seen a hard days work. It was obvious that Pascal was both a farmer and a winemaker, it emanated from his person. He was the terroir and the terroir was him. It is comforting and easy to be with someone who is so at home with their environs. Pascal has no pretenses and my French is full of 1990s slang so we immediately settled into easy conversation. Pascal is the 5th generation of winemakers in a line of winemakers that has been passed from father to son since 1864. Spoiler: Pascal’s son is sure to be generation 6. When I think back to my great-great-grandmother I wonder if there is anything that she has passed down to me that I can put my finger on? She came to the US from Italy to escape an arranged marriage to an Argentinian or at least that is how the story goes. I digress. Pascal’s heritage, his familial property of vines, spans over 15 individual plots of land. Some of his Gamay vines are 100 years old. Take a look at the photo above, you can see that they are gnarled, ancient, gorgeous. I mean if you’re into that kind of thing. For Pascal tending these beauties is a labor of love, and the plots “are carefully tended like little individual gardens throughout the year.”

Pascal took us on a tour of his facility, which was spotless. Having been in the restaurant business since I was 15 years old, I look for certain things when I’m out. You can tell a lot about a restaurant from its bathroom cleanliness. I think you can tell a lot about a winery from how clean it is especially in it’s time of non-production. Also isn’t there a saying that cleanliness is next to godliness, and we were in “Le Paradis”. That’s French for “The Paradise”. I couldn’t resist, it never gets old when you have the sense of humor of a 12 year old. The winery was compact, it wasn’t fancy, low technology, high in functionality. Pascal’s winery is a little different from other wineries, however. It has a press called a Marmonier that dates back to 1910. Félix Marmonier filed a patent in 1874 for his wine press. Upon researching Félix a little more, it looks like he may have created the first steam powered personal use car in France as well. I haven’t read his biography, yet. It is in perfect working condition, and we we all three saw it, our jaws dropped. Pascal went on to describe to us how he uses it every single harvest. All the wooden sides are stained the most exquisite shade of magenta, and when put together they form a tight seal. The grapes are placed inside, and then over the course of a day the manual pressing begins. As turning the wheel becomes more difficult different sized gears are put in to increase the pressure. If you are a weirdo wine geek like Jay, Jacques and myself then you would have been in wine heaven that day, and you would have thought that nothing could top this extraordinary discovery of a working and lovingly cared for Marmonier Pressior, but you would be wrong. Because, that is when Pascal brought out the Biodynamic sword. In my mind, this sword was much like saber from an Ali Baba tale. It was 3 feet long, and it had carvings on it. Jay has a photo of it that he is hoarding. Since I haven’t seen this photo in about a year it might not be quite as magical as I am remembering. Does it really matter though? We were all enrapt at that point, the history, the sword, the wine. Is that a an ELO song? It should be.

All of this happened in a time and place just before a global pandemic, October 2019. I never thought it would take until May 2021 to have a glass of Pascal’s wine again. In February 2020, Pascal and I started working on getting a shipment of his wine here to the states. Piedmont Wine Imports is his inaugural importer. Over the year plus that it took to make that a reality, Pascal and I have had more opportunities to chat. I think that my email French has improved. Email French is really an art form, and sometimes I just want to get to the heart of the matter. I appreciate that Pascal doesn’t mind that either. Just like when we first met, he is easy to converse with. He has a great sense of humor. Nice wine is made by nice people. It just is, and it tastes better too. I’ve decided that’s a thing. It’s the same with food. If you are grumpy when you are making dinner then your dinner is going to taste grumpy. At some point I think we will exchange our sons for a month or so, they are about the same age and have similar names. I figure it should work out perfectly. A little gastronomical education for my kid, some English skills for Pascal’s…it’s a win-win!

I cannot wait to get a glass of Pascal’s wine in your hands. -az