marius long (sense pressa/joli raisin) - padern, hautes corbières, aude
Marius hails from a family of hard-working restaurateurs originating in the Auvergne, he grew up in the two restaurants that his parents ran in Paris. It’s there that his fascination for gastronomy and wine developed and henceforth prompted him to move to Sancerre where he studied winemaking. After working for winemakers in Sancerre, Burgundy, the Barossa Valley and Latour de France he finally settled in the Hautes Corbières in the foothills of the Pyrenees where he initially worked for Domaine de Mena and Mazière before setting up his own project in 2020 in the village of Padern, surrounded by the dramatic limestone mountains that define this region’s terroir.
Marius now works just 4 hectares of Grenache, Carignan, Syrah and Cinsault and he vinifies roughly 8,000 bottles a year all in the basement of his home. Very much following in the footsteps of the few pioneer natural vigneron who settled here before him everything in Marius’s cellar is done naturally. All grapes are pressed manually in the basket press, fermentations are spontaneous and there is no temperature control. All wines are fermented, aged and bottled with no additions whatsoever. His wines defy perceptions of what can be expressed from this region and its local cepage. Flavours and aromas are delicate, elegant, the floral and lightly tropical aromas often reminiscent of cooler climate wines.
In 2022 Marius set up Joli Raisin, a negociant project in which vinifies small productions of wines in his cellar from grapes purchased from friends nearby. Joli Raisin was born from Marius’s desire to produce some white wine. Having trained in Sancerre and Burgundy he feels keenly the absence of white varieties in the valley where he settled. He therefore travels slightly further afield to buy select amounts of white varietals from friends who share similar farming philosophies.
