Article content In these tumultuous times, the future of wine could very well be the past. If anyone is going to save the wine business from extinction, it will be family wineries that live and breathe wine, usually in view of their vineyards. We take a quick look at two very different producers whose wines have crossed my path this summer; one from France and one from the Okanagan, yet both have the same essential element: a strong, family-run, sustainable business.
Frédéric Chaudière is the international face of Château Pesquié, locate in the Ventoux region of the Rhone Valley. The Pesquié history is the story of two families passionate about their region, Ventoux. In the early 1970s, Odette and René Bastide acquired Pesquié.
By the mid-1980s, Edith and Paul Chaudière, René and Odette’s daughter and son-in-law, gave up their medical careers and took over the family estate and nine years later, they left the local cooperative to set up Château Pesquié to release their first wines in 1990. In 2003, Alexandre and Frédéric Chaudière took over the domain from their parents, Paul and Edith. Together, they carried on the family tradition by digging deeper into the land, going from sustainable, to organic and then fully certified biodynamic Demeter grape growers, enhancing Château Pesquié’s reputation as one of the leading estates in Ventoux.
Earlier this month, I tasted several Pesquié white and rosé wines, including the work horse Pesquie.