Le Temps des Cerises

Axel Prüfer

Languedoc

La Tour-sur-Orb

Axel Prüfer was born in East Germany but as a young man he moved to Languedoc to work in wine making. He arrived in 1998, and got to know the greatest figures of natural winemaking (Yan Rohel, Jean-François Nicq, Eric Pfifferling) before he established his own domaine ‘Le Temps des Cerises’ in 2003, located in La Tour-sur-Orb. 8.5 hectares of vineyards on granite and quartz surrounded by forests. The vineyard is a great display of biodiversity, full of birds, insects, herbs, flowers and wild boars! He collects human hair from the local hairdresser in the village to distract the boars from attacking the vineyards. Axel commits to a non – interventionist winemaking approach.

All of his wines are made by carbonic maceration, without pigeage or pumping over, and at low temperature. Axel only uses natural yeast to ferment his wines, and he rarely ever use sulphur, close to none. He uses stainless steel or fiberglass tanks, and old barrels that do not release any oak flavors. Quantities are limited as the yields are low. . “Le Temps des Cerises” refers to a song of the French Revolution and all these cuvées tell a story of this period. Its fresh, lively and aromatic wines conform to its image; somewhat joker and especially anti conformist…