We first met Fatim’zahra Sabri in the cavernous underground cellars of the Rue Des Belles Caves collective, where she was pouring her wine at their annual salon. We were immediately drawn in by her warm nature, the beautiful Arabic calligraphy that adorned the bottles, and, when we tasted the wine inside them, discovered exactly the type of distinct expression we had been hoping for in our first grower from the Roussillon. It felt a far cry from the grey-skied winter gloom we found ourselves in at the time.

Born in Morocco, now residing in the tranquil isolation of the mountainous Pyrénées-Orientales, Fatim initially trained as a herbalist before fulfilling her long-term goal of making wine. After a lot of searching she was able to acquire her own ‘Mas’ – an old remote farm - that comprised 3.5 hectares of vines aged between 20 and 80 years of age and a place to live, in the Aspres region at the foothills of the Canigou mountain range.

Sitting at around 700 metres' altitude between the villages of Fourques and Trouillas, the vines sit in complete seclusion and were tended to by a grower practising organic farming before her who wanted to ensure that the land fell into the right hands before retiring. Using her previous training, Fatim works in the vineyard with her own brand of biodynamics, using homemade fermented plant extracts from the diverse flora of the hillsides. The arid soils are treated with copper only when absolutely necessary.