Vin de France, Belle Léone, Peyre Rose - 2012

Marlène Soria was a real estate agent in her first life and fell in love with the Languedoc in the 1980s. She wanted to change her life. She was looking for a place of exile and discovered the heights of St-Pargoire, in a lost garrigue. She fell in love with this wild area immediately. After training at the agricultural college in Montpellier, she bought 60 hectares to start her own business, planting 23 of them with vines between 1981 and 1984. A first. At that time there was nothing: no water, no electricity, just ruins that she had to transform into a cellar and a house... The beginnings were very difficult. A generator had to be set up and we had to drill nearly 170 metres deep to get water. She was all alone in the middle of nowhere and they called her Calamity Jane! Another parameter she had not taken into account was the bad reputation of Languedoc wines at the time: her first harvest in 1988 found no buyers. For lack of customers, she had to resign herself for five years to selling a small part of her production to the trade. Then, in 1993, she received a call from an agent for the American market, Peter Vezan, who was her saviour. Seduced by her wines, he allowed her to develop her export sales by advancing her the cash to finance her bottling. Then everything followed quickly. Importers and wine professionals began to call her to distribute her wines and she was...