Etienne Montès, a catalan wine maker

A stone’s throw from the end of the Pyrénées where mountain and sea meet, the Catalan Etienne Montes put down his bag after spending many years as a photographic reporter. The family vineyard La Casenove, like a sleeping beauty, had only to reveal its qualities. Since 1987, the deed is done thanks to Etienne’s enthusiasm and passion for his native land and his new craft. Here is a man who loves contrasts: this thoughtful, seemingly secretive person, takes patent pleasure in making contact with his new materials. This apparently calm individual boils with the fire of those who love a real challenge over time and task. This is inevitable when one is in the heart of the Roussillon, a land of passion and ambition. One has only to look closely at the jewel of the vineyard, la Cuvee du Commandant Jaubert – a wine of heady aromas of black cherries, of chocolate and liquorice that impresses by its bold structure: “sometimes I have a tendency to go too far, but you have to go too far in order to come back”.
Long live those who understand the virtues of excess !

(Jacques Perrin)