The family of Françoise Le Calvez parents, son and daughter- manage Chateau Coupe Roses with passion and acumen high in the Mediterranean hinterlands. Their vineyards, now all farmed completely biodynamically, are in Le Causse and Le Petit Causse (a causse or karst refers to an enormous outcropping of rock in this case, limestone that supports little more than southern France's omnipresent garrigue, olives and vines). These two delimited areas make up the highest growing zones in the Minervois appellation. At 750 to 1,350 feet above sea level, these zones have relatively cool nights and the growing season is the longest in the AOC (domaines down on the plain often begin harvesting a full two weeks earlier). The wines from Coupe Roses have excellent acidity and freshness, which Françoise always favored over the heavy and plodding characteristics of overripe wines. Her son Mathias, now in charge of the cellar, feels much the same.\n\nFrançoise's father hails from Brittany (Le Calvez turns out to be a common Breton name), but her mother's side of the family has been in La Caunette for at least twelve generations. The village essentially is a one-street village strung along a bench at the base of a tall limestone cliff that towers above the Cesse River. Cesse shares the root word of cease and cessation, because in summer this river stops running. La Caunette, for its etymological part, is Occitan, referring to small cave dwellings-in ancient times, the locals lived in caves burrowed into the cliff. Just upstream is the village of Minerve, which gives its name to the appellation of Minervois. It sits high on a pinnacle of limestone at the confluence of the Cesse and the Rieussec, hidden in a mountain valley behind the first range of mountains after the vast Mediterranean plain. It was here that the Cathars (catharsis-to purge!) had a stronghold, pascalwhich held out for months before surrendering early in a twenty-year crusade launched by Pope Innocent III in alliance with the king of France in 1209 that swept over the Languedoc and burned infidels wherever they could find them. They found a lot in Minerve.
