It was in the Loire, at Noëlla Morantin’s winery, during a meeting of producers, that we discovered the consistency of Elodie Balme’s wines and recognised a lineage of determined, autonomous women who make them vigneronnes of the «amazon» type: from the tractor to the winemaking, including raking, manual labour in the vineyard and contact with the public in the winery.
In the sunny and ventilated region of Rasteau, overlooking Mont Ventoux and Les Dentelles de Montmirail, Elodie has gradually taken the 24 ha of vineyards her father cultivated to deliver the grapes to the Cooperative and is dedicated to the organic production of estate wines with 3 distinct terroirs:
– an area to the north of Rasteau where the winery is located, called Buisson, with vines in great shape, on average 50 years old, on stony sandstone and marl soils.
– the Roaix terroir with a mixture of limestone on top with stones and red clays and a lower layer of sandstone and sand, a type of soil called «safre» in Provençal, algomerised sand in slabs.
– The Rasteau terroir is exposed to the south, with different soils depending on the position on the slope: rounded corners at the bottom, white limestone marl at the top and the safre soils that rise to the surface in the middle of the slopes, a terroir that produces powerful, deep wines.
In reds, the winemaking favours the king Grenache, Carignan (essential for the region), Mourvèdre with a little Syrah (obligatory in the PDO) and Merlot. In white, the indigenous Clairette and Bourboulenc are grown in the Roaix terroir on sand for the former and rounded corners and clay for the latter.
She has fearlessly introduced organic farming and draws on the heritage of old, vigorous vines that her father cultivated, as well as the valuable advice of her neighbour Marcel Richaud in Cairanne, where she gained the desire to produce naturally. The wines express the fleshy fruit of the southern Rhône without losing freshness and harmony, which is not easy in a region known for the alcoholic exuberance of its wines.
