Danjou-Banessy

The Danjou Banessy Wine Estate is located in the town of Espira de l’Agly, north of Perpignan in the Pyrénées-Orientales. The vineyards are situated on a plot with a wide variety of soils; this is one of the main reasons why Domaine Danjou Banessy produces so many single-vineyard cuvées, as it is not uncommon to find adjacent plots with soils composed of schist, limestone, quartz, sand, or even silt.

The Danjou Banessy family—and particularly the two brothers, Benoît and Sébastien —have always been committed to nurturing the vines and enriching the soils; they use agroecological and modern techniques such as biodynamics, no-till farming, and agroforestry.

The wine estate spans 20 hectares, where they produce white wine, red wine, and orange wine. Their passion and heritage drive them to adopt a minimally interventionist approach, always with the same goal in mind: to bring out the terroir in the wine. A wide variety of local grape varieties helps them in this quest for authenticity. Notably, the white grape varieties include Carignan Gris, Muscat d’Alexandrie, and white and gray Grenache. The red grape varieties include Grenache Noir, Mourvèdre, Syrah, Cinsault, and Carignan .

The various cuvées we’ve selected are all available in very limited quantities, starting with the famous Roboul cuvée — a magnificent Roussillon wine made from a blend of Mourvèdre and Grenache grown on a plot on the Agly terraces. The Coste Blanc cuvée, which has won us over to the Macabeu grape variety, reveals great purity. La Truffière Blanc, a wine with a minuscule yield (15 hl/ha) made from over 80-year-old Carignan Gris vines, is a great white wine with aging potential. La Truffière Rouge comes from very old Grenache and Carignan plots on schist soils—an intense, powerful wine of rare elegance. And how could we forget the incredible Estaca cuvée—100% Old Grenache from limestone terroirs—of which only 600 bottles are produced worldwide.

We also fell head over heels for their orange wine called Supernova, a Muscat of Alexandria with honeyed notes and magnificent bitter undertones.

In short, the Danjou Banessy wine estate won us over in every way and stands out as one of the best wine estates in Roussillon, alongside the famous Domaine Gauby and the superb wines of Domaine Le Roc des Anges.