Maison Raymond

The Raymond family has been working the same stretch of clay-limestone hillside in Saint-Laurent-du-Bois, fifty kilometres south-east of Bordeaux, since 1850. The first generations farmed in a traditional regional way, with vines among other crops, until sixth-generation boss Jean-Pierre Raymond committed the whole operation to viticulture in 1880. From there, the operation grew steadily across the neighbouring villages of Saint-Felix and Saint-Martial.

The modern Maison Raymond is built on Lionel Raymond’s decision to bet heavily on the future of organic production, committing to the switch way back in 2000, when he converted all 130 hectares at the newly acquired Château Joumes Fillon.

The winery’s estates today extend across three regions. The original Bordeaux holdings around Lagarde sit in Entre-Deux-Mers. A further 100-hectare organic property in the Languedoc, at the foot of Mont Alaric, supplies Grenache, Carignan, Cinsault, and Pinot Noir into the portfolio. Three Médoc estates at Bégadan, certified High Environmental Value Level 3, complete the picture, two of them holding Cru Bourgeois status since 1955.

The Vin de France category makes sense for an operation organised this way. Where AOC rules require each wine to remain inside its appellation’s geographic and varietal lines, VdF permits the blending of fruit across regions and the naming of varieties on the label without regional reference. A Merlot drawn from Bordeaux soils, or a single-variety wine made from Languedoc fruit and sold under a unifying brand, can sit on the same shelf at the same price point. This is precisely the thinking behind the winery’s Nos Racines range (‘our roots’). For producers spread across multiple regions, VdF gives the opportunity to tell a more cohesive story.

Yohan Lafon leads the winemaking today, alongside Elodie Gilles as cellar master since 2017, recruited from Veuve Clicquot, where she had previously managed sixty hectares and a team of fifteen.