Domaine Constant Duquesnoy

Gerard Constant, a successful Belgium businessman, was passionate about wine and had harboured an ambition of owning his own vineyard for many years. His work had taken him to many of the world’s most famous wine regions, where he had taken the opportunity to visit vineyards and he studied at the University of Suze-la-Rousse with further training in Burgundy. In his quest to find his vineyard, he took advice from some of France’s top winemakers in Burgundy, Alsace and the Rhone valley. His 30 acres of vineyards are at an altitude of 250-400 metres, with a south-easterly aspect. Due to their very steep gradient, they are largely terraced. The wines here are full bodied and complex, with superb concentration of fruit and a stylish minerality. Using no new oak, Gerard’s wines are beautifully pure and impeccably balanced, displaying the uplifting, freshness from the high-altitude vineyards of Vinsobres. These are sumptuous wines with real precision and refinement. In addition to his Vinsobres, Gerard crafts a few wonderfully accessible Cairanne, which just like his Vinsobres retain a fabulous focus and elegance, together with a complex, rich and deep palate. In addition, he produces some of the finest examples of Côtes du Rhone, with the ‘So Rhon’ offering an abundance of vibrant, crunchy fruit and seamless purity, accompanied by the more complex and serious, Lou Combaou. With his drive for perfection and love of great wine, it took him just a couple of years to gain international recognition, with Robert Parker describing the 2007 In Fine as one of the greatest wines he had ever tasted from Vinsobres.