The Enchanting Gardens - Léa Pallagès & Gabriel Willem

A mixed-crop market gardening project established on a 1-hectare plot in Herrlisheim-Près-Colmar. We work to nourish not only the body but also the heart and mind.

IT IS A POLITICAL, POETIC AND CIVIC PROJECT WHERE CULTURE AND AGRICULTURE ARE BLENDED. NATURE AND HUMANITY ARE FORWARDED WITH CONVICTION!

Continuing our work focused on the essential and the living, we decided in 2019 to produce fine wine, without any additives. The wines we offer will transport you to places long forgotten. Pure grape juice, produced using our traditional ratchet press and the beauty of life itself, will give rise to several bold vintages!

Grapes are the raw material of our wines. They are precious, which is why we minimize their handling. The harvest, of course, is done by hand, directly into 20kg crates. We transport them this way, and once they arrive at the winery, we either put them in maceration tanks or, depending on the project, we crush them directly for pressing immediately after harvesting. In this case, they go straight to our beautiful ratchet press before the afternoon, to preserve the morning freshness of our wines.

For a long time, grape juice was extracted manually or by foot treading. Back then, the ratchet press was a mechanical evolution of the process. We still tread our grapes before pressing them to open the berries and ensure we extract as much juice as possible. We bought an old, forgotten press, and after renovation and patience, we are proud to work with this magnificent tool! The juice then flows by gravity directly into our barrels! Later, the grape pomace is spread on our vegetable beds in the autumn to fertilize our market garden soil.

Our wines are aged in "old" oak barrels or casks that we bought second-hand, which therefore won't impart any woody notes to the wine. We simply appreciate that aging in old wood allows the wine to benefit from micro-oxygenation with the outside environment. Léa takes great pleasure in designing the labels, and we work with the GRAI printing company in Colmar for the printing.

Our Solstice bottles from Saverglass are special. We are proud of their shapes and their unique characteristics; it's a very important choice for us. We decided not to apply for the Alsace appellation, so we can play with all the parameters as we please and thus fully express our creativity. The stoppers are made entirely of cork from Trescases. We label by hand and also wax each bottle with beeswax before affixing the Marianne emblem!

All these deliberate choices make each bottle a unique piece of poetry, life, and love.