Val des Rois translates to ‘Valley of the King’, honoring Valreas’ historic winemaking region, first planted in the 9th century by King Charlamagne. Val des Rois is a 10-hectare estate in Cotes du Rhone planted in 1965 by 9th generation Burgundian winemaker Romain Bouchard that sits on the northern edge of the Southern Rhone in Valréas. The vineyard’s unique altitude and location gains exposure from the Southeast nightly cool air descending from the foothills of the Alps. Combined with veins of limestone and deep clay soils, this produces wines that are significantly higher in natural acidity than typical of the Southern Rhone, creating spectacularly unique wines at the hands of legendary winemaker Stéphane Vedeau. The wines and farming techniques are certified organic by Ecocert, with low intervention philosophy through low sulfur, indigenous yeast and no filtration.
Region: Côtes du Rhône
Noteworthy Distictions:
Wines by Val des Rois
Val des Rois, or ‘Valley of the King,’ is a single estate winery planted in 1965 by 9th generation Burgundian winemaker Romain Bouchard that sits on the northern edge of Southern Côtes de Rhône in Valréas, producing some spectacularly unique wines that are significantly higher in natural acidity than typical of the Southern Rhone.
Stéphane Vedeau, Owner & Winemaker
Since his first vintages at La Ferme du Mont, Stéphane has been congratulated by critics for proposing a very different approach of Rhone valley wines, where producers usually seek strong extraction, full ripeness despite of a lack of acidity. Robert Parker once called him “One of the young, energetic Turks of Chateanuef du Pape,” referencing a British expression for somebody who want to change things in a revolutionary nature. He is also the owner and winemaker of Clos Bellane and J. Boutin.
Stéphane is a perfectionist at heart and has a lifelong dedication to making wines of purity and grace. He adopts a non-interventionist farming and winemaking mindset. The vineyards are farmed organically certified by Ecocert, along with the wines. The wines contain no sulfur in the gravity-fed cellar during vinification, use indigenous yeasts and no filtration is used. In this way, Stephane is able to preserve the freshness and the fragile balance of these specific terroirs and obtain beautiful fine tannins without using oak barrel aging in order to preserve a bright and pure fruity bouquet of aromas.
Emmanual Bouchard, Agriculture Manager
Emmanuel Bouchard is the previous owner of Val des Rois. His father created the estate in 1965. Combining tradition and modernity, Emmanuel, a biologist by training, succeeded him in 1997 with the same spirit. In 2020, he decided to take partial retirement by selling his vineyards to Stéphane Vedeau. Since then, he has been a member of the team and takes great care of the vines planted by his father.
Emmanuel likes to start with the plant and its adaptation to the environment in which it lives. He experiments very slowly, to understand how and why the grapes react and what they bring to the final product which must remain in the general characters of the vintage. This is what his father Romain called: change in continuity!