The Mas des Tourelles

At the gates of Beaucaire, surrounded by pines and cypress trees, Mas des Tourelles cultivates the ancestral tradition of Roman wine growing, led by Hervé Durand, with his passion for vines and archaeology.

The Mas des Tourelles

The Roman town of Ugernum, the present day Beaucaire, was the point at which the Via Domitia entered Languedoc-Roussillon.

The road crossed the Rhône at Beaucaire and pushed on towards Nîmes. Between the two towns is a five mile stretch of the Via Domitia which is amazingly well preserved, with mile posts still in place.

Nearby is the Mas des Tourelles, an ancient Gallo-Roman villa with workshops and pottery kilns, which probably dates from the Augustan period. Between the 1st and 2nd centuries, vines were cultivated here over an area of more than 350 acres, and possibly olives too.

Wine production was on such a large scale that several of the kilns at Mas des Tourelles were dedicated solely to producing ‘amphorae’, the two handled storage jars used by the Romans for wine and oil. The famous ‘Gauloise IV’ jar, made by the Gallo-Roman potters in the Narbonne area, allowed Languedoc-Roussillon wine to be exported to the four corners of the Roman empire.

You can still see Roman winemaking in action at the Mas des Tourelles. The villa has a working reconstruction of a Roman wine press and cellar, and a replanted Gallo-Roman vineyard. It’s more than just a tourist attraction - serious research is going on here into the wine-growing of the period. But it’s great fun too. Once a year, the villa stages a Roman wine harvest and the presses go into action. Grapes are trampled by ‘slaves’, and pressed by the enormous oak press, before being vinified in large earthenware jars.

Mas des Tourelles :
Tel : 33 (0)4 66 59 19 72
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