DOMAINE JEAN BOUSQUET

The life of a wine-grower

Jean Bousquet was born in the southern city of Carcassone, France in 1948. Belonging to the third generation of a wine-growing family, he loves wine and vineyards.

At age twenty-three, he bought 140 abandoned hectares, comprised of thirty percent old vineyards, forty percent apple trees, and the remaining thirty percent uncultivated land.

Everything had to be redone, and after twenty years of dedicated effort, Jean finally obtained a plantation (120 hectares of varieties Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon), a wine cellar with the latest technology, and a growing wine market. Incessantly striving for superior quality, Jean realized that although the area had been well chosen, the sun was not sufficient to attain the maturity and optimum quality of grapes he desired.

Determined to search for a better place where to settle his wine production, he began traveling every winter to different wine-growing regions around the world.

In 1990, he became acquainted with the vineyards in Mendoza, Argentina where he went sight-seeing the lands, the wine yards, and the wine cellars.

Having expertly tasted the different local wine varieties and having investigated the amount of rainfall and the type of soil of the area, Jean became satisfied that he had found an ideal location for his winery. As a result, in 1997, he established his company in Tupungato, Argentina. The area has idyllic wine-growing precipitation and temperatures, mild during the day and cool at night. It is also situated at a good altitude (1200 meters above sea level), with fresh air, few funguses, and very permeable sandy and rocky soils. All these great attributes give the grapes the possibility to attain an optimum maturation without the risk of rotting and without having to use fungicides.

It was ultimately the fungus problem that had led Jean to transfer his company from France. In Tupungato, vineyards are treated with copper sulphate and

sulphur from three to five times a year, both products being natural and readily assimilated by the human body.

In the French countryside, however, vineyards are treated between twenty to twenty-two times per year with highly toxic chemical products which result in contaminated wines which lack the needed body and consistence to last in perfect conditions through time.
He summarizes this important change as following: “I’ve chosen the best place in the whole world not only to create natural fine wines of the best quality, but also to live comfortably and peacefully”…“I invite you to visit it and to try my wines”