Microleasing in the Languedoc: Innovations for the “Other” South of France

by Susannah B. Mintz

When Peter Mayle brought the south of France to American readers in his 1991 memoir A Year in Provence, forever linking our notion of true French charm with all things Provençal, he drew the line—literally—at the Rhône, the western border of the region. And if you tell most any north American that you’re vacationing in the south of France, they’ll assume you mean Cannes or Marseilles, Nice or Avignon, overlooking the many pleasures that lie just across the river, in the Languedoc.

Yet according to Michael Belanger, founder and president of Monte Lauro Vineyards, that “other south of France” offers all the rewards of Provence and then some. Belanger, a Canadian who’s been getting to know the Languedoc for more than a decade, has made it his life’s work to promote the wine, lore, landscape, and culture of a part of France long obscured by its more commercialized neighbors—despite boasting the largest volume of wine production in the country and a 150-mile stretch of Mediterranean coastline to rival the Riviera. Though Belanger does describe the Languedoc as “second best at almost everything,” he also insists that the region offers “everything the traveling public wants to see” in less-trammeled locales whose riches await discovery by non-natives.

The Languedoc-Roussillon is indeed an eclectic blend. With the bustling, contemporary university-town of Montpellier as its capitol; its fair share of Roman ruins and citadels; a cuisine showcasing such distinctive local products as olives, figs, lavender honey, and wild boar; three mountain ranges (the Pyrenees, the Massif Central, and the Cevennes); a robust tradition of artisanal crafts and antiques; an ancient dialect—Occitan—relatively unchanged by time; and a controversial wine trade some have gone so far as to call “anarchic,” there is much here to entertain a traveler grown weary of Provence and Bordeaux. And Belanger may be just the person to act as guide. He is an enthusiastic spokesman, declaring that “there is no more convenient place” in the south of France. “You can ski the Alps in the morning and the Pyrenees in the afternoon,” he says, “visit the ancient city of Carcasonne one day and modern Montpellier the next. Barcelona is three-and-a-half hours in one direction, the Italian Riviera three hours in the other, and the Mediterranean beach just twenty minutes to the south. If you want to experience things that are sweeping in their historical scope, it’s there. Or if you just want to put your feet up and have some wine, you can ‘come home’ to Monte Lauro. Time slows down here.”

“Welcome home” is the motto of Monte Lauro Vineyards, “microleasing” the drier, more technical term for the company’s signature offering, an innovative combination of vineyard ownership, adventure tourism, and cultural exploration. The product comprises ownership of ten vines, an annual case of wine with self-designed labels, meals and lodgings in a fourteenth-century farmhouse or local gites, guided tours of the area, and access to cooking and art classes, writing seminars, and, in the future, participation in archeological work on the property’s tenth-century castle. As Belanger explains it, microleasing is a form of ownership that allows a wine lover to “take that passion to a whole new level that wouldn’t otherwise be possible”—not simply because buying a vineyard is a proposition well beyond the means of the typical consumer, but also because the way we typically travel to Europe does not provide the same kind of long-term connectedness to a particular place. Practically, Monte Lauro microlease holders can claim a tangible asset in vines and wine. More existentially, they buy into a total experience, one Belanger characterizes as “comfort, ease, and beauty.”

The idea for Monte Lauro Vineyards arose years ago when Belanger, then an engineer for GE, met Jean de Montlaur, his counterpart in a business deal with a French electrical firm. De Montlaur, the titular partner in this enterprise, descends from an aristocratic family whose presence in the region can be traced back to about 750 AD, when some 500,000 acres of land in the region of Montlaur (perhaps named for the bountiful laurels that grow on the hills there) were conferred upon certain nobles for their loyalty to the king of France. The family’s verifiable history begins in 950 AD, when Bernard, the first “de Montlaur,” began construction of the castle whose ruins still stand on the property (it was significantly damaged by cannon fire during religious wars in the seventeenth century) and which is now a bona fide historical monument, classified by the French Academie des Beaux-Arts.

The Montlaur holdings, totaling 250 total hectares with ten ha under vine, are the oldest continuously family-owned vineyards in the world. The farmhouse—which Belanger has been singlehandedly updating to accommodate a tasting room, modern kitchen and dining room, and four bedroom suites—dates from the fourteenth century. But the history of the place extends further back than all of this, to the ancient Roman roads that converge just south of the chateau, and to the wine made for the Greeks by the Celts. For Belanger, an avid history buff, a key component of the microleasing concept is the joy that derives from making a mark on a place with so old a story. It is precisely the collision of past and future, the unique combinations of landscape, activity, and pace one can fashion in this section of France, that he emphasizes as its remarkable advantage.

Monte Laura Vineyards has been in development for about ten years, since Belanger and Jean de Montlaur decided to revive wine production and to initiate restoration of the farmhouse and chateau. Oversight of the Montlaur vineyards, which had been in the hands of tenant farmers for hundreds of years, reverted to the family in 2007 when the current farmer retired (it is a peculiarity of old French law in the region that the sons of tenant farmers have right of refusal.) Direct control has allowed Belanger and de Montlaur to improve the quality of the vines—mainly carignan, grenache, cabernet, merlot, mourvèdre, and sauvignon blanc—which had languished under the tenant-farming system. Under the guidance of award-winning oenologist and vineyard manager Jean-Pierre Martin (formerly of Chateau Gaia and Chateau Gaidou), winemaking during what Belanger calls Phase I of the business will continue to be handled by the local cooperative, then move to a sub-contract model in Phase II, and ultimately to self-production. Such an evolution is important to this venture: the Montlaurs, Belanger says, “take their stewardship of the land seriously.” To bring winemaking back to the estate is thus to realize its fullest potential.

It must be said, however, that winemaking in the Languedoc has suffered somewhat by overproduction. Belanger acknowledges this frankly. “It’s a piece of reality I’ve stared into the face of,” he says. “The high calcium content in the soil, the moderating effects of the Mediterranean, and lots of sun make the Languedoc an excellent place to grow grapes, but not much else.” (“The Languedoc has never gone thirsty,” he quips, “but it’s gone hungry quite often.”) The result has been something of a surplus of grapes. While this positioned the region extremely well as a bulk wine supplier, it also meant that the quality of the wine produced was not always even. The European Union contributed to the problem by paying subsidies to farmers for the removal of vines, a solution Belanger calls “misdirected.” “In a region so well suited to growing grapes,” he says, “the emphasis should be on improving quality, not reducing the yield.”

Only half-ironically, Belanger describes the Languedoc as “the Titanic of the geographic regions,” referring not just to its vast production capability, but also to the reluctance on the part of some vignerons to adjust their methods to more sophisticated modern techniques and equipment or to make wines that respond to the maturing of “the world’s palette.” But over the past twenty years, quality has been on the rise. New appellation designations and regulations are conspiring to create increasingly supple and structured wines that reflect the characteristics of the countryside. (I tasted the 2007 Chateau de Montlaur Coteaux de Languedoc, and it is indeed an intriguing wine whose strong black fruit strikes the palate with distinctive notes of figs and honey, then mellows quickly with a balanced, mineral finish; it’s a rich ruby color with powerful carmel and toast in the nose.) “The future of wine,” Belanger promises, “will be about Languedoc.”

The industry, and the public, both seem ready for a project like that of Monte Lauro Vineyards—call it microleasing, coming home, or what you will. What we want is superior wine that intrigues and surprises our palettes, a mode of travel that rejects anonymity by giving us the means to create unique experiences, cultural and gustatory exploration that can be hard to achieve in the relative likeness of hotels and tours—and we want it all economically. So in place of your next three European vacations or cases of red, consider buying a little piece of the south of France. The other south of France.