Domaine Minhaé
Saint-Étienne-des-Oullières, Beaujolais
Rhône Valley, France
Since 2021, Lan Bertrand has been quietly tending 2ha of vines in the rolling countryside north of Villefranche-sur-Saône, based in the southern department of the Beaujolais region. An accountant by training and a mother of two, Bertrand didn’t become a winemaker until she was 45 — at an age when many might hesitate to chart a new course, let alone one in the demanding world of viniculture. During our recent visit in 2024 at her cellar in Saint-Étienne-des-Oullières, she shared her story with the warmth of someone deeply in love with their craft; candid and suffused with enthusiasm.
Born in Laos & raised in France, Lan worked for two decades as an accountant before a financial role at a local winegrowers’ cooperative — which led her to reconsider everything. “I saw stars in the eyes of the people there,” she recalls. “I wanted to feel that too.” At 45, she enrolled in viticulture studies, trading spreadsheets for soil chemistry, and later apprenticed with Philippe Viet in Villé-Morgon.
In Blacé, a charming commune northeast of Villefranche, the summer vines had yielded small bunches of great concentration. It’s mid September, and Bertrand, her face bright & wind-chapped, gestures to her “favourite plot.” Between two neat rows of Gamay, field grasses and legumes are taking root. "That’s rye and phacelia," she explains, crouching to run a hand through the cover crop. “The idea is to de-compact the soil, bring in biomass, and make it hospitable again — for insects, for bees, for earthworms.” She flashes a grin: “I don’t plow. It saves time.” - Her work is a dialogue with the land rather than an imposition upon it, and she experiments with non-écimage (leaving vines untrimmed) to encourage deeper rooting. While she manages only a few hectares, her ambitions are deliberately modest: “It’s enough,” she insists, as everything is bottled, labeled, and packed by her own hands.
A member of the Syndicat de Défense des Vins Naturels, the organisation behind the official vin méthode nature label, recognized by the DGCCRF. This affiliation aligns her with the most rigorous standards of natural winemaking in France. Closer to home, she participates in the AdapTénuer project, coordinated by the Rhône Chamber of Agriculture, a collective experiment in climate-resilient viticulture through cover-cropping and reduced soil disturbance (zero till). She also lends her hand to the Vignes Blaciennes association, strengthening ties with her neighbours while quietly refining her craft.
Her practical approach belies a poetic sensibility. Bertrand's work is steeped in respect for the vine & the ecosystem it inhabits. She speaks with quiet reverence about feeding her soils and drawing life back into them. Her inspiration? The teachings of Masanobu Fukuoka, the Japanese pioneer of “do-nothing” farming. It’s an ethos she embraces with fervour: minimal intervention, maximum care.
The writings & philosophy of Masanobu Fukuoka (1913–2008), the Japanese farmer, scientist, and philosopher best known for his seminal book The One-Straw Revolution. First published in 1975, the work became a manifesto for a new kind of agriculture — what Fukuoka called “natural farming”. His approach rejected the heavy-handed interventions of modern agronomy — chemical fertilisers, pesticides, mechanical tillage — in favour of a radical simplicity rooted in observation, patience, and trust in ecological systems.
Today, Bertrand manages a patchwork of parcels scattered across northern & southern Beaujolais: a sliver of Moulin-à-Vent here, a bit of Régnié, and Blacé there. With no tractor and working entirely by hand, “I like to take my time,” she says, an understated nod to her meticulous nature. Her farming is strictly organic & biodynamic, and certified biodynamic through Demeter in 2024. But Bertrand insists that certifications are not her compass: “It’s not about chasing labels, but about doing what feels right.”
In the cellar, Bertrand’s ethos is firmly naturalist. Fermentations are spontaneous with indigenous yeasts, macerations are slow and gentle, and the wines are bottled unfined, unfiltered, and with little or no added SO2. Each cuvée is released in the spirit of vin méthode nature, a style she considers both an ethical choice & a personal conviction.
For all her ingenuity, Lan Bertrand remains disarmingly pragmatic. She does not aspire to growth or grandeur but to equilibrium—between vines and soil, between work and life, between ambition and joy. The measure of success is not scale but integrity. Two hectares are enough. Each year she bottles only what the land happily yields, without forcing volume or uniformity. The wines are not polished to fit a mold; they are allowed to speak eloquently, vintage by vintage, parcel by parcel. They carry the freshness of her approach, the patience of her hands, and the humility of a life re-routed midstream toward the vineyard.
As she surveys the vines of Blacé — rye and phacelia pushing between neat rows of Gamay — her words capture the ethos of Domaine Minhaé: “It’s all for the well-being of the vine.” And in that well-being, one finds wines of startling authenticity: vibrant, unforced, alive.
