Domaine Durieu

The estate exists because of a wedding present. In 1976 Lucile Avril handed her son Paul Durieu a few hectares of vines so that he could start out on his own. The Avril family had been in Châteauneuf-du-Pape since the sixteenth century, and among those parcels were vines she had planted herself, some of them predating the First World War. To that Paul added what he inherited from his father, Henri, in Plan de Dieu and Côtes du Rhône.

From there he built the domaine: he bought five more hectares, put up the cellar and the winemaking facilities, and kept expanding to the present thirty-seven hectares in Châteauneuf-du-Pape, plus another sixty-eight in Côtes du Rhône and Côtes du Ventoux.

Since 2004 the house has been run by his sons, the brothers Vincent and François. And the name of the woman who started it all is still in the range: one of the cuvées is called Lucile Avril.

The vineyard is the classic of the appellation, covered in galets roulés, the rolled pebbles that store the day's heat and give it back at night.