The Caviste & the Oenologist

The story of Domaine de l'Astré begins not in France but in Argentina, at the foot of the Andes Cordillera, where two people from different corners of the French wine world discovered they shared the same dream. Sylvain Ohayon is from the Bordeaux region. He earned his oenology diploma in 2006 and cut his teeth in the New World at Domaine Jean Bousquet in Argentina, followed by a position as cellar master at Château Vieux Landat in the Médoc. He knew the technical side of wine — the chemistry, the protocol, the precision of great châteaux. Aude Duval is from Corrèze. She worked as a caviste — a wine merchant — in Libourne, on the right bank of Bordeaux. She knew the commercial side of wine — the customer, the bottle on the shelf, the moment when a wine becomes an experience rather than a product.

They met on a viticultural trip to Argentina, two French people drawn to the other side of the world to understand what wine could be outside the rigid structures of their homeland. They fell in love. And they formed a shared ambition — not merely to make wine, but to "give meaning to their lives" by creating something that transcended the bottle: "a wine so good that by drinking it, one feels radiant with friendship and kindness." This is not marketing language; it is the moral foundation of the estate. Every decision since 2017 — every declassification, every amphora, every co-fermentation — has been made in service of this single idea.

In 2017, they returned to France and took over an estate of 8 hectares in one piece on the border between Gironde and Dordogne, in the Périgord Pourpre (Purple Périgord). The vineyard had been farmed organically since 2012, and Aude and Sylvain immediately deepened that commitment by adopting biodynamic practices. The soil was clay-limestone. The vines were 35 years old on average. The setting was a limestone cliff 80 metres above the Dordogne valley, protected by forest. It was not Bordeaux. It was not the Médoc. It was something else — a terroir of hilly landscapes, limestone cliffs, and quiet isolation that would allow them to work without the pressure of appellation conformity or neighbourly scrutiny.

From the beginning, they made a radical choice: they would declassify all their wines to Vin de France. The estate sits within the Bergerac/Montravel appellation, and they could have claimed those labels. But they refused. Appellation rules would have prevented them from co-fermenting white and red grapes, from making pét-nats, from creating orange wines, from blending across categories. By declassifying, they bought creative freedom — and accepted the commercial risk that comes with it. This was not a rejection of quality; it was a rejection of constraint. In 2025, they made another radical choice: they reduced the estate from 8 hectares to 3 hectares of vines and planted 1 hectare of orchard for cider and fruit wines — a pioneering ecological move that proved their philosophy is not about scale but about meaning, not about volume but about intention. They are not following the model of expansion; they are following the model of sufficiency.

The guiding philosophy of Domaine de l'Astré is expressed in three words: kindness, freedom, and nature. Aude and Sylvain are committed to winemaking that allows the terroir to speak — not merely the vine, but the entire ecosystem of forest, limestone, clay, and microbial life that they have cultivated since 2017. This is not a rejection of their Bordeaux training; it is its highest application. As an oenologist and a caviste, they understand that the complexity of a wine begins in the complexity of the soil and the honesty of the cellar. As vignerons, they have learned that the best way to honour that complexity is to do as little as possible between the grape and the glass — and to remove the appellation rules that would force them to do more. The result is a portfolio that is typified by pure fruit, digestible energy, and living acidity — wines that are as unconventional as they are unmistakably Périgord.

The methodology is deliberately minimal and fundamentally natural. All grapes are hand-harvested across the 3 hectares of biodynamic vines, and transported immediately to the cellar. Fermentation is spontaneous — initiated by the indigenous yeasts that live on the grape skins and in the wild air of the Dordogne valley. Aude and Sylvain do not inoculate with cultured yeasts, add enzymes, or force the wine into a predetermined shape. The wines are vinified with very little manipulation — short macerations for the reds, direct pressing for the whites and rosés, whole-grape maceration for the orange wines. The wines are aged in a combination of old used barrels, terracotta jars, and sandstone amphorae — each vessel chosen to bring out a different aspect of the terroir. The wines are neither fined nor filtered, and sulfur is used only when absolutely necessary. This demands absolute cleanliness in the cellar, perfect grape health in the vineyard, and a willingness to accept that each vintage will be slightly different from the next — because each vintage is a conversation between the limestone cliff, the weather, and the wild yeasts, not a product of a recipe.

The most radical aspect of their winemaking is not what they do in the cellar but what they have refused to do in the boardroom: they declassified every single wine to Vin de France. The estate sits within the Bergerac/Montravel appellation, and they could have used those prestigious labels. But appellation rules would have prevented them from co-fermenting Sémillon with Cabernet Franc, from making pét-nats, from creating orange wines, from blending across colour categories. By declassifying, they bought the freedom to experiment — and accepted the commercial risk that comes with it. This is not a rejection of quality; it is a rejection of constraint. The wines are not polished into shiny perfection; they are guided with patience and intuition, allowed to reveal their depth slowly rather than being forced into immediate appeal. The result is a portfolio of wines that are honest, spontaneous, and alive — wines that change in the glass, that evolve for years in the bottle, and that carry the unmistakable signature of two people who spent a decade learning to listen to the Périgord.

The cellar is not a technological facility; it is an extension of the biodynamic garden — a quiet space where Aude, Sylvain, the grapes, and the indigenous yeasts do the work. There is no temperature-controlled tank farm dictating additions, no consultant recommending corrective enzymes, no recipe that overrides the vintage. There is only the couple, the limestone cliff, the terracotta jars, and the patience to let the wine take the time it needs. The result is a portfolio of wines that are pure, digestible, and living — wines that have attracted the attention of La Revue du Vin de France (selected among "18 domaines à suivre de près"), Terre de Vins, Le Figaro Vin, and a growing community of natural wine lovers who value originality over convention. As one critic noted, their Sémillon orange wine Réjane is "sèveux et profond" — sappy and profound — while their Merlot in jar Agapa is "croquant, fruité et plein d'énergie" — crunchy, fruity, and full of energy. This is the South-West as it should be: not bound by Bordeaux rules, but free to express the limestone truth of the Périgord.

To understand Domaine de l'Astré, one must understand that it is not merely a winery; it is a philosophical project, a biodynamic synthesis, and a proof that two people from Bordeaux can unlearn Bordeaux. The identity of the project is defined by the couple — Aude, from Corrèze, a caviste who understood the bottle from the customer's side, and Sylvain, from Bordeaux, an oenologist who understood the bottle from the cellar's side. Two people who met in Argentina and returned to France with a shared ambition: to create a wine so good that by drinking it, one feels radiant with friendship and kindness. The identity is also defined by refusal — the refusal to use appellation labels, the refusal to expand beyond 3 hectares, the refusal to follow the Bordeaux model of power and extraction, and the refusal to treat wine as a commodity rather than a gift. The estate is not a monoculture; it is a home. The result is a portfolio of wines that are not merely products but expressions of kindness — each bottle a testament to the conviction that wine should be pure, digestible, and alive.

The identity is also defined by language — the Occitan names that adorn every bottle (Flamenc, Esper, Pèlroge, Onèsta, Agapa, Esgaiada, Réjane) are not mere marketing; they are a declaration of regional identity, a refusal of the Parisian/Bordelais linguistic dominance that has long overshadowed the South-West. Each name carries a meaning: Flamenc (flamingo), Esper (hope), Pèlroge (red skin), Onèsta (honesty), Agapa (love), Esgaiada (eruption of joy), Réjane (their daughter). The wines reflect this intentionality: they are not casual, not rustic, not naive. They are precise, alive, and deeply considered — the product of two cultures (Corrèze and Bordeaux) and two disciplines (commerce and science) converging on a limestone cliff above the Dordogne. In 2025, they made the most radical choice of all: they reduced the estate from 8 hectares to 3 hectares of vines and planted 1 hectare of orchard — not because they had to, but because they believed that smaller is more honest, that cider and fruit wine have as much right to exist as grand cru, and that the future of farming lies in diversity rather than monoculture.

The future of Domaine de l'Astré is tied to the continued health of their 3 hectares of biodynamic vines, the maturation of their 1 hectare of orchard, and the gradual refinement of a portfolio that already spans orange, red, rosé, white, pét-nat, and piquette. Aude and Sylvain are eager to go further — to explore new expressions of the limestone cliff, to deepen their understanding of amphora ageing, and to obtain ever more precise, kind, and living expressions from the fruit of their own Périgord soils. The Réjane will continue to be the orange ambassador, the Agapa the love cuvée, and the Flamenc the flamingo soul of the estate. They do not chase trends; they chase the truth of their land and their hearts, and they have the patience to let that truth speak in its own voice — a voice that is Occitan, biodynamic, and unmistakably kind.

In an age of increasing industrialisation in wine — of global varieties, engineered yeasts, and corporate consolidation — Domaine de l'Astré stands as a compelling alternative, not because it rejects modernity but because it has embraced a deeper modernity: one that values biodynamic farming over chemical convenience, hand harvest over mechanical efficiency, indigenous yeasts over inoculation, amphora and clay jars over new oak intrusion, declassification to Vin de France over appellation conformity, co-fermentation of white and red over colour segregation, pét-nats over champagne imitation, 3 hectares of intention over 8 hectares of volume, orchards over monoculture, the kindness of the caviste over the arrogance of the château, and the specific voice of a limestone cliff over the standardised replication of a global style. Aude Duval and Sylvain Ohayon are not merely making wine; they are proving that a wine merchant and an oenologist can become the voice of the Périgord, that 3 hectares of limestone can produce wines of international recognition, that a wine with nothing added but time and kindness can possess the most profound identity, and that the simplest philosophy — a wine so good that by drinking it, one feels radiant with friendship and kindness — is often the most profound. From the first vintage in 2017 to the wines of today: all united in one cliff, one synthesis, one unanswerable argument for the possibility of authentic, biodynamic, hand-made, passionately honest wine from the limestone heart of the South-West.