Who are we ?
“Once upon a time … an enterprising young man, who earned his living as a banker, dreamed of giving life to the passion of his youth discovered in the vineyards of Saint-Émilion: Wine! This passion, shared by his wife, a doctor, led them to Les Mangons and the fairy tale started … in a castle! The fairies sprinkled their magic dust over the cradle of their two young children and their first harvest was the beautiful 1990 vintage that came to join the magnificent 1989 already housed in the vats … Everything was looking very promising. But… the wicked fairy godmother did not intend to let things run so smoothly and sent a harsh frost in 1991 that hit the whole Bordeaux region: in the collective wine-growing memory, there had not been one so severe since 1955!”
Everything could have stopped there if our love for this magical place, our passion for the vineyard and the wine had not been so strong … Overcoming the whims of this beautiful and generous nature, with the same pleasure we continue this fabulous adventure of wine and life.
Brigitte et Michel Comps
‘‘I lifted the bucket up to his lips. He drank, his eyes closed. It was as sweet as a celebration. This water was something quite different than ordinary nourishment. It was born of a walk beneath the stars, from the warbling of the pulley, and from the effort of my arms when I lifted it. It was good for the heart, like a gift.’’
Le Petit Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Our Values
At the heart of our passion,it is the daily observation of our vineyard that guides us.
Reinventing and experimenting is key in our work.
Every year it’s the same vineyard but yet it’s always different … and so is the wine.
The poetry of wine, its life, the emotion that emerges from it, that is what we care about.
The mystery of each vintage is revealed: it offers itself for enjoyment in a friendly atmosphere and opens us up a world of exchanges, pleasure and complicity.
Biodynamics
The harmony of the vine, the soil and its environment
Biodynamics is the difference provided by a rural-focused approach full of common sense: to find the harmony of the vine, the soil and its environment.
Our vineyard activity is directly related to nature, from the infinitely small microbial life of the soils, to the infinitely large planets and cosmos that influence our agricultural practices and our wines.
Our estate, formerly dedicated to mixed farming, has always maintained rich biodiversity and preserved its influence in the exchanges of the vineyard with its environment.
We have been present on the property since 1990, and chose to run the entire estate according to biodynamic agriculture following the harvest in 2000.
Our wines are been certified as organic (Ecocert label) since 2004 and biodynamic (Demeter label) since 2010.
Our Terroir
The land and our attachment to it
It is typified by two types of unique soils:
The upper-side of the vineyard :
a loam-clay plateau, of the boulbene type with manganic-ferric outcrops, which can very quickly pass from a muddy consistency to the hardness of concrete; it is the soil that controls the work, as if the tools had to coax it into to letting itself be worked.
The lower side :
a beautiful brown earth that “sticks to the feet”, the clay sometimes wrenches off your boots … A mix of limestone and flint – whose friction and the charred smell it gives off fascinates children and sometimes perfumes the wine – bring freshness and rectitude in our wines.