Domaine Houchart

Domaine Houchart was bought in 1890 by Aurélien Houchart, a wine négociant and friend of the painter Cézanne; his family farmed the estate for decades before it passed out of their hands, and in 2002 it was bought back by his descendants and folded into the Quiot family's holdings in Provence. The property sits at the foot of the Sainte-Victoire mountain near Aix-en-Provence, on land farmed since Roman times, with fragments of Roman roof tiles found on the estate near the old Via Aurelia, part of the deep agricultural history of southern France.

Houchart's rosé blends Syrah, Grenache and Cinsault into a dry, pale rosé in the classic Côtes de Provence style, built for freshness rather than weight. The wine is fermented cool to preserve its delicate colour, reflecting the sun-baked but breezy conditions at the base of the mountain.