“The vineyard lives inside the garrigue.”
The path was made of white stones. Mylène Bru found it in 2008, walking above her hometown of Sète on the Mediterranean coast — a trail of ancient limestone cutting through garrigue scrub, leading to fifteen small plots of abandoned vines tangled in wild thyme and juniper. She followed it.
She had tried the conventional route. Born in Sète, raised in Corbières where her grandparents tended vines, she studied oenology in Montpellier and moved to Paris to work in wine PR. But her grandparents' vineyard had never been offered to her. She was a woman. That door stayed shut.
The white stones opened a different one. The land had no water, no electricity, no cellar. So she built the cellar herself. Five hectares on pure white limestone — ancient seabed, really, the clay shot through with shell fossils from a time when this hillside sat beneath the ocean. Holm oak and lavender and rosemary grow thick between the plots. The garrigue doesn't frame the vineyard. The vineyard lives inside the garrigue.
Her grape mix reads like a botanical survey of the Mediterranean rim: Carignan and Grenache dominate, then Syrah, Cinsault, Tempranillo, Marsanne, Aubun, Muscat de Hambourg, and Chasselas — a variety so unexpected in the Languedoc that when Bru discovered old vines of it on her land, she traveled to Switzerland to study with Marie-Thérèse Chappaz, one of the grape's great practitioners.
Everything is whole-cluster fermented, pressed in a vertical wooden press, raised in stainless steel. No wood. No filtration. Around 1,500 cases a year.
Her cuvée "Rita" is named for her grandmother and for Rita Hayworth — a double inheritance of toughness and glamour. Catherine Deneuve once ordered twelve bottles before the Cannes Film Festival. DJ Gilles Peterson made Bru the exclusive wine supplier for his Worldwide Festival in Sète, where the music plays until dawn on the same coast where she grew up.
The limestone still glows white in the late afternoon, the vines casting short shadows across the fossil-studded clay.
WINES FROM DOMAINE MYLÈNE BRU
Bright and luminous with pomegranate and fresh fruit. From the garrigue north of Sète — organic, unfined, and built for easy drinking.
The full expression of Mylène's 7-hectare organic estate. Six varieties blended into one harmonious Mediterranean red.
Every red grape Mylène grows, all in one big bottle. Her signature Mediterranean blend in party format.
Frank and fruity, planted on lacustrine limestone. Mediterranean warmth without heaviness — this one says exactly what it means.
Made exclusively for Sans Honneur. Velvety and generous from the south of France to the heart of Texas.
The Cowboy's counterpart — same Mediterranean spirit, lighter touch. Another Sans Honneur exclusive from Mylène's organic estate.
Single plot of 60-year-old vines on a north-facing, wind-exposed slope called the Triangle. Ink-dark, blueberry, morello cherry. Built to age.
The Windmills of My Heart. A three-part blend with silk, backbone, and depth that keeps revealing new layers.
Old vines on two tiny limestone terraces, inspired by Mylène's grandfathers in the Corbières. Concentrated, honest, and full of character.
Nighttime sunshine. Whole-bunch fermented separately, blended after fermentation. Raspberry, dried fruit, white flowers — structure meets lift.