The Enclave & the Amphora Pilgrim

The story of Justine Vigne begins in Richerenches — a village in the Vaucluse, in the far north of the Southern Rhône, whose history is so dense that it seems to emanate from the soil itself. The Vigne family has farmed here since 1826, cultivating vines, truffles, lavender, cereals, and vegetables across generations. Sheep grazed the land until the 1980s. Winegrowing entered the family's history in the 1950s, when Justine's grandfather planted the first plots and sold the grapes to the local cooperative. For decades, the fruit was anonymous, blended, stripped of identity by industrial process — until 2017, when Justine had the opportunity to take over 3.5 hectares of her grandfather's vines and begin a new chapter.

Justine's path to the vineyard was not linear. She grew up playing music, making ceramics, and drawing — a childhood immersed in art rather than agriculture. She studied art at university, but a transformative encounter with an artisan baker's naturally leavened bread, made with local organic grains, reminded her of her grandparents' farm in the Ardèche, where they grew everything they needed as a way of life, not as a job. They lived in unison with nature — unlike her father, who used pesticides and herbicides to control the family's natural heritage. This contrast awakened something in Justine: a desire to return to a culture of life that embodied both agriculture and art.

She studied biodynamic agriculture in Burgundy, then enrolled in winemaking school in Dijon, where she completed her Master's under Jacques Mell — one of Burgundy's preeminent and original biodynamic consultants. She discovered natural wine while working harvest at Rémi Pouizin's Domaine de la Fourmente, just one town over from Richerenches. In 2017, she moved to Australia to work harvest with John Nagorcka of Hochkirch Wines in Victoria — a biodynamic practitioner and disciple of Alex Podolinsky, one of the wine world's biodynamic pioneers. Justine calls Podolinsky her spiritual grandfather; she returned to stay with him in 2019, shortly before his death, reading, discussing, and visiting other farmers in a final, intensive immersion. She also worked with Philippe Viret — the maker of "cosmic nectar" — and completed a stint at the legendary Châteauneuf-du-Pape estate, Vieux Télégraphe.

When Justine returned to Richerenches in 2017, she did not simply inherit a vineyard; she reclaimed one. She withdrew the 3.5 hectares from the cooperative, converted immediately to organic and biodynamic viticulture, and began crafting wines under the Vin de France category — a choice that gave her the flexibility to work with single varieties and unconventional methods without the regulatory constraints of the Côtes du Rhône appellation. Her vision is one of geobiology, energetics, spirituality, and a slow pace — a lifestyle at nature's rhythm rather than the market's. The names of her cuvées reflect this philosophical depth: Sensation for Rimbaud's poem on the sensuality of the natural world; Anitcha for the Buddhist concept of impermanence; Ultreïa for the pilgrim's cry on the Camino de Santiago; Yoga for the ancient mind-body practice; and 1826 for the year her family planted their first vines.

The winemaking philosophy at Justine Vigne is governed by a commitment to transparency, gentleness, and the pre-industrial wisdom of clay. Justine's wines ferment with indigenous yeasts — no commercial inoculation, no enzymatic correction, no tannin addition. The only intervention is a small dose of sulfur at bottling if absolutely necessary for stability; in the 2021 vintage, no sulfur was required at all. The wines are bottled without fining and without filtration — a choice that preserves the natural textures, microbial complexities, and living evolution that Justine values. The result is wines that are slightly hazy, alive, and possessed of a vitality that conventional winemaking rarely achieves.

The most distinctive aspect of the cellar is the use of amphora and Georgian qvevris — a practice Justine learned from her neighbour, Philippe Viret. She employs both freestanding amphorae and qvevris buried underground, providing micro-oxygenation that results in a great deal of finesse and transparency. These clay vessels are neutral, porous, and breathable — they allow slow oxidation and the development of complex, earthy, textural qualities without the aromatic imprint of wood. In the most recent vintages, Justine has increased both the percentage of whole-bunch fermentation and the percentage of wine aged in amphora — a flexibility and willingness to experiment that has resulted in improvements year on year. The combination of whole-bunch infusion and clay-vessel ageing creates wines of remarkable silkiness and length.

The reds are produced primarily through whole-bunch fermentation — the grapes are gently infused with their stems, achieving fresh flavours and approachable tannins without the hard extraction that destemming and punching down can create. The stems contribute spice, structure, and a herbal complexity that complements the ripe fruit of Grenache and Carignan. The gentle infusion method — rather than aggressive maceration — allows Justine to capture the essence of each variety without overwhelming it. The wines are then aged in amphora, qvevri, or tank, depending on the cuvée and the vintage, with the proportion in clay increasing each year as she refines her method.

The finishing practices reflect Justine's spiritual and ecological convictions. Bottling is done with minimal sulfur — often none at all — and without any filtration or fining. The wines are not sterile; they are stable because they are balanced. The low-intervention approach is not a rejection of technique but an embrace of biology: the winemaker as facilitator rather than manipulator, allowing the vineyard's natural health and the vessel's gentle breath to create wines that are simultaneously ancient and modern, rustic and refined. Justine also makes her own gin from the used grape skins and stems — a closed-loop practice that turns waste into resource and that embodies the biodynamic principle of agricultural self-sufficiency.

To understand Justine Vigne, one must understand the concept of the biodynamic artist — a viticultural identity that merges the creative sensibility of an art student with the rigorous ecological discipline of a biodynamic practitioner. Justine did not come to wine through family obligation; she came to it through bread — through the taste of an artisan baker's naturally leavened loaf, which reminded her of her grandparents' farm in the Ardèche, where agriculture was a way of life rather than a job. Her background in music, ceramics, and drawing informs every aspect of her project: the cuvée names are poems and spiritual concepts, the labels are expressions of personal symbolism, and the wines themselves are treated as artworks that evolve, that breathe, that refuse to be standardised. Yet this artistry is grounded in the hardest of agricultural realities: biodynamic viticulture, horse-drawn tillage, amphora ageing, and the relentless physical labour of a 3.5-hectare estate farmed almost entirely by hand.

The qvevri pilgrim identity that Justine has cultivated is equally distinctive. She is not merely a natural winemaker who uses clay vessels; she is a student of the Georgian tradition who learned from Philippe Viret and who has made amphora and qvevri the defining feature of her cellar. The qvevri — buried underground, neutral, porous, alive — is not a trend for Justine but a philosophical choice: it aligns with her biodynamic convictions, her spiritual practice, and her belief that wine should breathe at the pace of the earth rather than the pace of the market. Her increasing use of whole-bunch fermentation and clay ageing with each vintage is not experimentation for its own sake; it is a pilgrimage toward ever greater transparency, ever finer texture, and ever deeper connection to the limestone of Richerenches.

The future of Justine Vigne is tied to the deepening of her relationship with her 3.5 hectares — the maturation of her biodynamic practices, the refinement of her amphora and qvevri programme, the development of new cuvées that explore the full potential of Grenache, Carignan, Syrah, and Marsanne on the limestone of the Enclave des Papes, and the strengthening of her position as one of the most sought-after natural wine producers in the southern Rhône. The estate will remain tiny — 3.5 hectares, hand-harvested, horse-tilled, clay-aged — because scale is not the goal; sincerity is. The Sensation will continue to express the Rimbaud-esque sensuality of the vineyard. The 1826 will continue to carry the memory of the family's first plantings. The Anitcha will continue to remind drinkers of impermanence. The Ultreïa will continue to urge the pilgrim onward. And the experimental cuvées will continue to test the boundaries of what this young, spiritually grounded domaine can achieve.

In an age of industrial wine production, of chemical agriculture and marketing-driven branding, Justine Vigne stands as a compelling alternative — not because she rejects modernity but because she has embraced a different modernity, one that values biodynamic horse-ploughing over chemical convenience, whole-bunch amphora ageing over new-barrel toast, indigenous yeasts over laboratory inoculation, Vin de France freedom over appellation constraint, spiritual intentionality over commercial strategy, and the specific voice of Richerenches over the standardised replication of a global style. Justine Vigne is not merely making wine; she is making a life — a life that bridges art and agriculture, spirituality and science, the Ardèche grandparents and the Australian biodynamic pioneers, the Templar Commandery and the clay vessel, the black truffle and the old-vine Carignan. The 1826 family root, the 2017 reclamation, the 2019 pilgrimage to Podolinsky, the amphora, the qvevri, the whole bunch, the zero sulfur, the unicorn demand, and the name that has meant biodynamic art in the Enclave des Papes for a new generation: all united in one bottle, one estate, one unanswerable argument for the possibility of authentic, place-specific, heritage-rooted, spiritually informed, creatively evolving artisan wine on the limestone hills of Richerenches, in the ancient and modern land of the Popes.