This year marks the début of Caroline Gimenez in the United States. In many respects, Caroline is different from the vast majority of winemakers we represent. Having spent the majority of her adult life in Paris, she is not a seasoned paysanne. In fact, with virtually no vines of her own, she’s not much of a neo-paysanne either. In a roundabout fashion, Caroline’s introduction to winemaking was olitical. While working as a filmmaker and artist in Paris, Caroline met Jerome Saurigny, whom she knew better as an activist and anarcho-syndicalist than a winemaker. The two became close in the course of land occupations in Western Anjou to prevent the industrial development of forest land, and then later in the course of the gilets jaunes movement of 2018-2019. Jerome and Caroline fell in love and eventually Caroline decamped to Anjou. After working alongside Jerome, she resolved to set out on her own, invoking the ancient and constitutionally guaranteed right to glannage, the process by which a citizen can claim the unharvested or abandoned fruit on otherwise private land. In some places, glannage can be coldly legalistic, but for Caroline, it’s meant forming relationships with neighbors who farm some of the most storied parcels in and around Savennières and Saint-Aubin-de-Luigné. It would be easy to draw comparisons between Caroline’s winemaking and that of her partner Jerome. Indeed, they share ideas, much equipment, and a “cellar” (that resembles an airplane hangar). But to me, Caroline’s burgeoning project has an identity very much its own. In her first vintage, I am reminded of some of my very first experiences with natural wine. These are wines marked by gentle extraction, radiant colors, and charming aromatics. One thing Caroline does share with Jerome is an unrelenting curiosity and absolute aesthetic freedom in her winemaking. 

- Josh Eubank (Percy Selections)