The Catwalk, the Two Vines & the Sans-Domaine Hand
Sans Domaine — "without domain" — is the honest name Lambert Perera Cortés gave his wine project when he had no vines of his own. He came from another world entirely: fourteen years in the fashion and footwear industry, a certified sommelier, and still today a university professor of biomaterials and smart textiles — a man who speaks about his wines with the same precision with which he analyzes materials. The passion ignited around 2017 via the natural-wine app Raisin; in 2019 the journey began in earnest in Quebec, with two small vines — one Seyval Blanc, one Pinot Gris — then the purchase of a Petite Perle vineyard near Sherbrooke, where he and his partner Mickael made their first wines. Back in Catalonia, two small vineyards in Llorenç del Penedès sealed it: Sans Domaine was born in 2021, working with the territory's farmers, with one day, vineyard by vineyard, having his own. That day has come: he now farms 3.7 hectares of his own — La Vinya de Dalt in Aiguamurcia, Alt Camp, 1,458 vines of Malvasia, Macabeu, Selma and Gewürztraminer in regenerative agriculture; and Can Branques, a hectare of Xarel·lo planted in 1964 and 1996, recovered in 2024 after three years abandoned — plus parcels across the Baix and Alt Penedès on limestone and slate. The farming is regenerative, biodynamic, entirely manual: compost and nettle infusions, lunar calendar, cover crops, no herbicides, no chemistry. The cellar creed is radical: carbonic maceration of whole grapes, bled without pressing, no sulfites, no additives, no filtration — slow, indigenous fermentations, a few weeks of amphora, an acacia or cherry barrel. Each cuvée runs to 300–700 bottles. And at the centre of it all, a rescue mission: Moneu, a nearly unknown variety of which barely ten or twelve hectares exist on the entire planet — Sans Domaine is one of the only projects on Earth giving it a wine of its own.
The Fourteen Years, the Quebec Frost & the Borrowed-Land Hand
The first career was shoes. Lambert Perera Cortés spent fourteen years in the fashion and footwear industry — entrepreneur, and professor of biomaterials and smart textiles, a man trained to think in fibres, surfaces and structures. The turn came by bottle: fascinated by wine, certified as a sommelier, and inspired by the natural-wine world he discovered through Raisin, he began his viticulture journey improbably far from home — in Quebec, in 2019, with two vines: one Seyval Blanc, one Pinot Gris. By early 2021 he and his partner Mickael had bought a vineyard of Petite Perle near Sherbrooke and made their first two wines in the frost. A lab coat, it turns out, is not so different from a vigneron's jacket: both belong to people who observe.
Back in Catalonia, the project found its name by telling the truth. Sans Domaine — "without domain" — because there was no domaine: the first wines were made with the farmers of the territory, from young vines in the Baix and Alt Penedès, with the stated ambition of owning vineyards one day. The first bottlings arrived in 2022: El Rouge, a nervy, carmine varietal Sumoll Negre at 11 degrees, and Orange22, a Xarel·lo Vermell that spent six weeks in amphora — the most requested wine of that first vintage. Lambert did everything himself then, and mostly still does: vineyard tracking, ripeness controls, harvest, cellar work, sales, design, social media, even the sommelier work at his own tastings.
The second harvest, 2023, was the radical one — "from the beginning I wanted to go toward natural wine, without any addition; this 2023 will be so" — and it was funded in the most Sans Domaine way possible: not a bank loan but a Verkami crowdfunding campaign, pre-selling the vintage to cover three stainless tanks, two barrels (one acacia, one cherry) and the bottling. "More fun and more exciting to work with micro-patronage," he wrote — and a way, too, to depend as little as possible on banks. A drought year, complicated and singular; the grapes, he reported, were a marvel. Time, patience and a great deal of love.
"In the bottle you will only find grapes. No additives, no sulfites, unfiltered. Time, patience and a lot of love."
— Lambert Perera Cortés, Sans Domaine
La Vinya de Dalt, Can Branques & the Moneu Hand
The name is aging beautifully: Sans Domaine now has its domains. The heart of the project is La Vinya de Dalt — "the vineyard above" — in Aiguamurcia, Alt Camp: 1.3 hectares and 1,458 vines of Malvasia, Macabeu, Selma and Gewürztraminer, farmed regeneratively and circularly, with vegetal cover and not a single product of synthesis. In the Alt Penedès sits Can Branques: a hectare of Xarel·lo planted in 1964 and 1996, which Lambert recovered in 2024 after three years of abandonment — sixty-year-old vines, back in production under biodynamic care and cover crops. Parcels like La Garrina Nova and La Morada are vinified separately, in lots of 300 to 700 bottles.
Around the owned parcels runs the original network — the farmers of the territory whose vines Sans Domaine has worked since the beginning: the naturally farmed Xarel·lo near Santa Fe del Penedès whose cover crop keeps the soil's moisture through the drought; the old Parellada of Subirats tended for years by Lluís. The soils of the two Penedès — the high Alt and the lower Baix — are rich in limestone and slate, giving the wines their mineral base. In total, some 3.7 hectares under Lambert's own hand, plus the borrowed rows where it all started.
And then there is the ark. Sans Domaine works an extraordinary roll of recovered Catalan varieties: Moneu — a nearly unknown grape of which barely ten or twelve hectares are planted on the entire planet, and which Sans Domaine is one of the only projects in the world to vinify on its own; Garró, another pre-phylloxera survivor in recovery; Sumoll, black and white (the white known locally as Selma or Salma, a rarity of the Penedès); Xarel·lo Vermell, the pink-skinned mutation; alongside Macabeu, Garnatxa, Parellada, Malvasia and Trepat. This is ampelographic exploration as a mission: the invisible diversity of the Catalan vineyard, made visible one micro-cuvée at a time.
The home farm: 1.3 hectares in Aiguamurcia, Alt Camp — 1,458 vines of Malvasia, Macabeu, Selma and Gewürztraminer under regenerative, circular agriculture. Vegetal cover, compost, natural infusions such as nettle, and not a single synthetic input. From this vineyard comes the white that bears its name — Sumoll Blanc in absolute protagonist, an ampelographic exploration of the diversity that hides in plain sight in Catalan vines.
A hectare in the Alt Penedès planted in 1964 and 1996 — vines of sixty years and thirty — abandoned for three years until Lambert took them back in 2024. Now under biodynamic management and cover crops, hand-harvested, the old Xarel·lo gives the Jane Skin Contact: twelve days on the skins, a fortnight's fermentation, two weeks on the lees, and nothing else. The proof of the project's founding promise: the borrowed land is becoming his own, one rescued parcel at a time.
The rarest card in the deck. Moneu is a Catalan variety so nearly extinct that the entire planet holds perhaps ten or twelve hectares of it — and Sans Domaine is one of the only projects giving it vinous protagonist status. El Delerós, a light, nervy red, is among the very few Moneu wines ever bottled; Moonew May is, to date, the only ancestral-method Moneu sparkler in existence. To plant it, farm it and bottle it is ampelographic rescue in the literal sense.
Before there were estates, there were friends with vines — and that network still runs through the range. The Xarel·lo from near Santa Fe del Penedès, naturally farmed with a cover crop that guards the soil's moisture through the drought; the old Parellada of Subirats, tended for years by Lluís, whose care of the land shows in the fruit. Sans Domaine began as a pact with the territory's growers — and the pact holds, even now that the name lies.
Carbonic, No Press & the Materials-Scientist Hand
The house style is built on a single, decisive technique: carbonic maceration of the whole grape. Around fifteen days intact in tank; then destemming; then the must returns to stainless steel with its lees for twenty to thirty days; and then the wine is bled off — without pressing, taking only the finest, most delicate fraction of the fruit. No press means no harshness: the tannins stay soft, the fruit stays luminous, and the wines carry the rounded, lifted character that runs through everything Sans Domaine makes, red, white or orange.
Around that spine, the rules are absolute: indigenous yeasts, slow fermentations, no sulfites, no additives, no filtration, no clarification. The vessels are chosen like a materials professor chooses them — for their properties. Stainless steel for precision; amphora for six weeks of quiet texture (the Orange22 that made the project's name); acacia and cherry barrels, bought with the Verkami campaign, for the wines that want air without oak flavour; bâtonnage twice a week where the lees deserve stirring. Harvest itself follows the lunar calendar — the Macabeu for Orange 25 was picked in three passes on flower and fruit days, into 17-kilo boxes.
The newest frontier is microscopic. For the past while, Lambert has been integrating microbiology — following and working with the indigenous yeast populations present on the vines themselves, so that each parcel ferments with its own microbial signature. It is the biomaterials lab transposed to the vineyard: the same precision, the same fascination with surfaces and living systems, turned to grapes. Minimal intervention, he demonstrates, is not a lesser technique — it is a more demanding one.
Only Grapes, Hands & Time — the Sans Domaine Method
The method is a short, strict recipe executed with a scientist's care. Farm regeneratively — compost, nettle infusions, cover crops, lunar calendar, everything by hand. Pick in small boxes, in passes timed to flower and fruit days. Ferment whole grapes carbonically for a fortnight, destem, rest the must on its lees, and bleed the wine off without ever pressing it. Add nothing — no sulfites, no additives — and take nothing away: no filtration, no fining. Raise it in steel, amphora, acacia or cherry, as the material requires. Bottle 300 to 700 at a time. The bottle, as the man says, contains only grapes. The rest is time, patience and love.
Delerós, Moonew May, Equinocci & the Micro-Cuvée Hand
The range is a working archive of Catalan ampelography in micro-editions of 300 to 700 bottles: Moneu and Garró from the brink of extinction, Sumoll in both its colours, Xarel·lo Vermell, Salma — alongside the Macabeu, Garnatxa and Parellada of the Penedès heartland. Every wine: whole-grape carbonic maceration, no press, indigenous yeasts, no sulfites, no additives, no filtration. Reds, whites, oranges and ancestrals — each parcel vinified separately, each bottle a small argument for diversity.
The Verkami, the Vinoleather & the Rescue Hand
Sans Domaine's first legacy is a template for the career change done honestly. No investor, no estate inherited, no consulting winemaker — a professor of smart textiles who started with two vines in Quebec, crowdfunded his tanks and barrels on Verkami rather than take a bank loan, and learned in public, vintage by vintage, from the nervy Sumoll of 2022 to the drought-defying wines of 2023. As his friends at Terroir Radical put it, he is one of those producers you understand immediately: he left a consolidated career in the big city to return to the countryside, to the varieties that could be lost.
The second legacy wears well — literally. From the collaboration with two of his former students came Vinoleather: a grape-leather made from the wine industry's own biomass, born when an Italian shoemaker with vineyards proposed experimenting with grapes. The company now produces some 300 square metres of grape leather a year, with a collaboration with a well-known shoe brand on the way. The man from footwear has come full circle: the vine now makes the shoe. Few winemakers can claim their waste stream walks.
And the third legacy is the ark itself. In an era when global wine is converging on a handful of famous varieties, Sans Domaine pushes the other way — Moneu, Garró, Salma, Xarel·lo Vermell, Sumoll — bottling grapes that exist in single-digit hectares so that they exist at all. The fairs have noticed: Les Ju(s)vénils in France, the Pego natural wine fair, the Mambo in Sant Llorenç d'Hortons. "Wines made so the thread is not lost," as his merchants write. Sans domaine, perhaps — but never without roots.
"He left a consolidated career in the big city to return to the countryside, to farming, to the varieties that could be lost. Wines made so the thread is not lost."
— Terroir Radical, on Sans Domaine