Gregory & Laure Aurel
Gregory likes to save things and make them last. In 2012, he saved the last family plot to give new life to old memories: the joy of the harvest, the alchemy in the winery, the taste of the terroir he knows so well.
Nostalgia is always bittersweet, but it’s rarely bottled as beautifully as at Pech Del Cel. You can smell the history of this place in the family’s old leather ledger. It plays witness to all the incomings and outgoings since 1920 - the jars of wine, the kilos of lime, the fennel seeds and the grape harvest. Thanks to Gregory, it’s still an open book. He is a bank manager, but spends every moment of his spare time in the vineyard, on the last remaining family plot, keeping the link.
Like all the old vineyards in Gaillac, Pech del Cel was a farm first. Grapes were just one crop among many. Mauzac was the first variety planted at Pech del Cel to produce dry white wine in bulk. Sales were simple in the 1930s and 40s, there were agents all over the country, but during the war, lots of vines were uprooted and replaced with cereal crops. It was a question of survival. The 70s was a sunnier period for the Aurel family. Gregory’s parents met during the harvest and the new Madame Aurel soon moved onto the farm. There were four generations all living under one roof! By the 1980s, business was booming: “People were drinking wine day and night in France, whether it was a Vins de Pays or an AOC” says Gregory. “My parents were producing wine by the truckload and sending it off to be bottled in Bordeaux and Nantes, but then the Loi Evin came in and consumption dropped dramatically, and the price of bulk wine with it”. The winegrowers had to change their strategy. They had to become winemakers too. “Some estates took to it quickly. They began bottling their wine themselves while focusing on quality and local values. It was the way forward, but it’s a very different job. You have to know how to grow grapes, how to make wine and how to sell it too, and selling wasn’t my parents’ thing.” Then came a series of catastrophic frosts: “it was really tough…that’s when they started pushing me and my brother to do something different, something stable and secure. They didn’t want us to be winemakers. They didn’t want us to struggle like them.”
So Gregory went into banking, but when his parents retired and started selling off the family plots to the neighbours, he was heartbroken: “every day, I’d be talking to clients wanting to buy a vineyard and thinking we have a tractor, a winery, hectares of vines, everything I need to get started and it’s all going to waste.” One day on his way home from work, he saw someone in the last remaining plot, someone sent by a potential buyer: “Who’s that pruning the vines? I want to keep them!” said Gregory. He joined his parents at the notaire’s office the very next day. “I just wanted to continue something they did really well. There’s nothing better than making your own wine that reflects you and your terroir, from the vines you saw being planted when you were in your pram.”
Life can be stressful at the bank and the vineyard keeps Gregory grounded: “The viticulture part didn’t interest me at first, I always preferred being in the winery. But little by little, I’ve learned. I haven’t used any chemical products since I took over the vineyard in 2012.” Since 2020, his wife Laure has joined him full-time, and his father and grandfather are still very present too: “I use all their old tools and equipment. I was lucky because I had no big investments to make, except for some barrels, a de-stemmer and some new vines. I already had a lot of white grapes (Mauzac, Loin de l’oeil, Sauvignon) but not so many black grapes, so I planted Braucol and Duras, grafting each vine with my father using the same knife that he always used. It takes four people to do a graft and it’s always a special moment.” Those special moments keep the heart of Pech del Cel beating: “Winemaking is incredibly fulfilling and there’s nothing like harvest time, it’s always a happy moment. We have always worked with grape-pickers here and now all the growers in the collective Terres de Gaillac are doing the same thing. It’s a revival. It’s really important to keep the human link.”
The symbol of Pech del Cel is a barn owl - a chouette in French or Caüs in Occitan. It’s a tribute to the commune of Cahuzac-Sur-Vère, and to the truth of this terroir on the Cordes Plateau. In Celtic lore, barn owls are the guardians of the truth. They can see in the dark. They can pass messages between worlds above and below, between what we perceive and what we know, and all that comes together in Gregory’s wines. Look out for them, and savour that link.
At a Glance
Hectares
4
Terroir
Clay-limestone, partly on the chalky Cordes Plateau in the commune of Cahuzac-sur-Vère.
Grape Varieties
Mauzac Rose, Loin de L’Oeil, Sauvignon, Braucol, Duras, Syrah Muscadelle.
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