More about Maurice

My roots are in the Rebouls vineyard and I am Lledoner Pelut but Katie likes to call me Hairy Grenache. I’m not sure if I’m with her on that one but I would do anything for Katie. Just to make it very clear from the start though it is my leaves that are hairy not anything else! And I would say more of a down but that might be splitting hairs!

We love to house little spiders in our hair which gets Katie very annoyed but not as annoyed as the farmers that planted us in the fifities. They planted us as second best – when they were no longer able to plant the noble Grenache grape. Imagine how we felt with grumpy vignerons cursing and swearing as they begrudgingly grafted us on to their American rootstock. Oh how they wished we could have been Grenache. And oh how we made them suffer – we never ripened like the grenache, we never darkened our skins like the grenache but we did have hairs and we did fill them with spiders!

In retrospect perhaps we shouldn’t have been quite so bitter because, as soon as the farmers were allowed to, they ripped us up and planted their beloved grenache. We were so worried that Katie would do the same when she bought the Rebouls vineyard. But how wrong were we? She only wants us to produce a small amount of grapes, she loves the lighter colour of or skins and she has spent years experimenting in her little winery to get the best wine from our grapes. And now she’s cracked it; only four days on the skins and we give her a lovely light soft fruity style of wine!

Katie thinks the whole story is pretty funny so she has made us a quirky comic strip label and called it 'Along Came Jones' – thank goodness she did come along!