Marie Durand-Hulak perpetuates the family know-how while energizing the Domaine de La Triballe. Portrait of a young winemaker who never stops...
Hello Marie, what is your role at Domaine de la Triballe?
We are a tiny family estate, so of course, you need to be a true Swiss army knife! From the vineyard to vinification, from blends to managing the flock of sheep, from the maintenance and harvesting of our aromatic plants to oenotourism, welcoming visitors, or creating new activities like our escape games and tasting workshops… you have to be a little bit everywhere!
And that's exactly what I enjoy. At Domaine de la Triballe, we cultivate biodiversity in our lands, but also diversity in our activities: zero boredom guaranteed!
Domaine de la Triballe has been cultivating organic vines since 1974, long before it was a given: what does it mean for you to carry this heritage today?
For us, it's almost a given, as it is so much a part of our history.
We grew up with the culture of healthy eating, respectful agriculture, and the essential idea that the land does not truly belong to us: we are only borrowing it from our children.
Today, our will is to continue to keep those values alive, but above all to pass them on, over and over, to the generations that will come after us.
You have had other professional experiences before returning to join your parents and sister in the family estate. What made you want to come back and make it your life?
The desire to lead projects that are dear to my heart, but above all to do it here, at the heart of my territory.
I often say that you can really know if you are living in the right place – or perhaps the most beautiful place! – only if you have gone to see elsewhere. That's what I did. I lived abroad, in Corsica, discovered other landscapes and very beautiful places… but ultimately, it mainly made me want to return and share my own territory with others.
The Pic Saint-Loup is, in my eyes, a magnificent, preserved, intimate territory that deserves to be discovered through its landscapes, of course, but especially through the people who live there and make it vibrant.
Your vines are divided between two different terroirs; in AOP Pic Saint Loup and in AOP Grès de Montpellier. How does this dual identity manifest in your wines?
At the estate, we love to offer a tasting "battle" between Pic Saint-Loup and Grès de Montpellier, precisely because it allows for a concrete understanding of the terroir's influence on the wine!
Only a kilometer separates our plots between the two appellations. The same family works the vines, the same team vinifies the grapes, and yet, in the glasses, the differences are evident.
On the Pic Saint-Loup, our wines are more marked by Syrah. The area benefits from higher precipitation and especially beautiful temperature variations between day and night during maturation. This results in wines with fresh aromas, sometimes almost mentholated, with those characteristic garrigue notes of Pic Saint-Loup.
On our Grès de Montpellier, Grenache takes more precedence. The maritime influence and a gentler maturation produce rounder, more indulgent wines, with notes of ripe fruits, spices, and sometimes a slightly jammy side.
This is what we seek in our work: to intervene without masking, to allow each terroir the possibility to tell its own story.
Oenotourism has been constantly developing at Domaine de la Triballe for several years, with several options today to discover the estate. Why this choice?
My first desire was simply to bring people back to vineyards. Show them our work, its beauties but also its difficulties and challenges: preserving biodiversity, climate change, fire risks, maintaining landscapes…
It all started with explanatory walks in the vines and garrigue. Then the idea of escape games came up, because I personally love investigative games! It was another way to introduce the estate, more playful, and especially one that allows us to reach people who may not be initially aware of agriculture, wine, or nature.
The idea remains the same: to introduce our universe, but in different ways, so that everyone can find their entrance.
What experiences can one have when visiting you?
There are several, and they all allow for a different discovery of the estate! You can go for a guided walk of 2km through the vines, garrigue, aromatic plants, and sheep, to understand our environment and our way of working.
For the investigation aficionados, our escape game "Who killed the owner?" leads participants through the estate on the trail of my ancestor, Jean Durand, in an attempt to unravel his mysterious disappearance.
We also offer a blending workshop "four hands", to be experienced as a couple, with friends, or family: each one creates their own cuvée before leaving with their bottle – or a magnum created together. And of course, you can simply come to taste our wines in the cellar, accompanied by homemade or local products, and delve, through the glasses, into the discovery of our terroir and our universe.
You are going even further with the launch in September of the "Terrace des Rainettes": how did this project come about? What can visitors expect?
This is our little new feature for the new school year! Starting from September 3rd, and every first Thursday of the month thereafter, we are opening our wine bar: "La Terrasse des Rainettes".
The idea is quite simple: to open the doors of the estate even more and create a friendly meeting place where you can come with friends or family, have a drink, share good local products, and enjoy the place.
Once a month, we want the Terrace des Rainettes to become a place where we gather without fuss, to regularly share the estate's life with people!
What does a day at Triballe look like?
We start the day by taking the sheep out and end it by bringing them back to the sheepfold. But between the two… it’s impossible to predict two identical days!
It can be a day in the vines, working in the cellar, harvesting lavender and other aromatic plants, attending a trade show to present our wines, welcoming visitors for a tasting, a walk, or an escape game…
This is also what we love about this job. In addition to working as a family, we are lucky to have days that never look alike.
If you had to choose just one… which estate cuvée tells your story the best?
Hard choice! But I would say "La Capitelle", our Grès de Montpellier.
Perhaps because, like the Grenaches that make it up, it requires time to mature and be shaped. And ultimately, it resembles us quite well!
We too take the time to build, to imagine, to experiment, and to give our best to create quality wines, activities, and products. Things that make sense, that represent us, and, above all, that we are proud to share.
What does Grand Pic Saint-Loup inspire in you? If you had to give a word, a feeling...
The strength of an authentic, poetic terroir that is deeply natural, which simply inspires us!
And finally, I would like to add that working as a family is not always easy, of course! But it is an extraordinary adventure because it has meaning.
Several generations have succeeded each other here, each contributing their stone to the edifice. Today, we are trying to keep the estate alive and evolving without losing what defines its identity.
