Mas du Bruchet, Meylan

Anne-Marie Ferguson and her husband run the Le Mas du Bruchet Bed & Breakfast in Meylan. Here is their story of how they set about restoring the building and its original vineyards. 

“In the upper reaches of Meylan, close to the slope of the mountain, there was a small white cottage, surrounded with vineyards and gardens, from where there is a plunging view on the Isère Valley”*, thus spoke Berlioz about this place in his memoirs. 

This is also how my parents discovered, when they bought the property in 1957, that they were the lucky owners of a very special place. When my husband Michael and myself took the place over from my family, the house and its adjacent barn were surrounded by five hectares of land covered with a thick forest. We found an old picture in the Archives of Meylan, showing the white house, surrounded by vineyards. It then went through our mind that we would rather have a view on a vineyard than a forest. And so started our adventure. 

To begin with, Michael took a correspondence course with the Wine School of Beaune in Burgundy, which he completed within two years. The academic part done, the land needed preparation. We hired a landscape company that spent three weeks cutting the trees, digging stumps out and burning them (we had a huge fire going on for all that time). He then levelled the land which was on a 14° slope, and finished preparing it for plantation. 

We then gathered a bunch of devoted friends over one weekend and in spring 1998, planted the first plot of 3,600 wine plants. That lesson learned, for the next plantation of 9,700 plants, we hired professionals, who spent three full days at their task. Michael chose the Verdesse grape varietal, a traditional and local plant that had nearly vanished, as it was considered as a capricious and irregular plant. Michael was convinced that this varietal had qualities that could be the basis for a great wine and set out to prove it. 

The first small harvest being scheduled for three years later, we had time to organize a cellar. We bought a second-hand wine press, a pump, and stainless steel vats from Teisseire in Bernin, from which emanated lovely lemon sirop flagrances! We have since invested in wooden barrels where our vintage is kept for 18 months. 

In 2003, we restored the adjacent barn and built a traditional vaulted wine cellar on its subterranean part. Above, we created four rooms that we turned into a Bed & Breakfast we named Le Mas du Bruchet. We welcome businessmen and travellers from around the world and if they happen to be with us during the harvest and fermentation time, they have the privilege of enjoying the sweet smell of fermenting must as they enter the building! 

In 2004 and again in 2009, our efforts were rewarded as our Verdesse won the gold and silver prize, at the concours des vins de l’Y grenoblois. We surprised many locals, who predicted that we could produce nothing extraordinary with the local grapes and terroir. We have now a regular following of people who come to our cellar on the property, and proudly introduce a bottle of Verdesse wine from Meylan on their table or counter!

* Translation © 2004-2010 Monir Tayeb and Michel Austin. All rights reserved. See the full text here.

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