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After studying literature at college, Vincent Tricot arrived at winemaking via a desire to travel, working in vineyards as a seasonal worker in Chile, Alsace, Gard, and Beaujolais. At the latter, he decided to attend oenology school before apprenticing in Brouilly. It was during this time that he met Marcel Lapierre (a prominent natural winemaker) and other minimal interventionists, and experienced vins sans soufre, or wine without sulfur, for the first time. He was taken with their teachings, and so his path was set.

While working for a large domain in the Costières de Nîmes, Vincent met Marie, who descends from a family of vignerons in Beaujolais. In 2002, Vincent and Marie purchased 4.5 hectares of organic vines from a retiring vigneron, and moved with their daughters to the village of Orcet in Auvergne.

It was a pioneer’s property, with the land having already been farmed organically since 1971. The Tricots added to this forward-thinking trajectory, continuing in a minimalist production style, while reactivating this quiet wine region.

Phylloxera and the first world war had decimated the region’s originally 500,000 hectares of vines to a mere 200 hectares. But the Tricots’ plot was a small concentration of pre-phylloxera vines and they were enamoured with the rare opportunity to work with them.

Auvergne Gamay reigns in the vineyard, joined by Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, and a little Muscat and Sauvignon Blanc. These are picked by hand, and there is no sulfur, filtration, or fining during production. These pared-back methodologies require more care and attentiveness in the vineyards, but this also means that the Tricots have come to understand the terroir and their grapes more intimately. They have been successfully and exclusively producing vins sans soufre since 2011.