Abandoned Vineyards in the Languedoc: Florence Monferran’s Viticultural Revival, Between Heritage, Climate and Economic Reality
Can reclaiming abandoned vineyards help preserve threatened terroirs, grape varieties and winegrowing practices? In the Languedoc, bringing these plots back into use is not simply a matter of restoring agricultural heritage to production. It also raises questions about succession, profitability and adaptation to climate change. For while some old vines and grape varieties appear to offer potential paths forward, preserving them comes up against the realities of vineyard work, low yields and an economic model that is difficult to sustain over the long term.
Historian and winemaker Florence Monferran has turned her research into winegrowing heritage into hands-on experience. In Mireval, she restored old vines, experimented with an unfortified Muscat based on archival sources, and observed the economic, human and climatic challenges that accompany such a revival. Her journey also raises questions about the future of Languedoc terroirs that are now under threat.
Florence Monferran spoke to Grand Cru and Etiquette on 11 September 2026.
From Wine Heritage to Restoring Abandoned Vineyards
Historian Florence Monferran had never intended to become a winemaker. Her entry into the wine world came through her partner, himself an oenologist and winemaker. She gradually turned her attention to winegrowing heritage, and then to the history of Muscat Blanc à Petits Grains. Languedoc municipalities subsequently approached her to think about how to revitalise their wine sectors and what wines they might produce. It was through this work that she became a winemaker herself.
The move from research to practice was therefore not a break, but a continuation of her work as a historian. “I also see history as a tool for understanding the questions we face today and looking for possible ways forward,” she explains. Above all, working in the vineyards allowed her to experience what archives cannot show: the physical reality of working the vines, its constraints and its rhythms.
Why Take Over an Abandoned Vineyard?
The project began in Mireval, near Vic-la-Gardiole, when the lease on a plot became available. The vineyard had been abandoned, but it had one characteristic that immediately caught the historian’s attention: its age.
The land included a vineyard dating from the 1960s, planted with non-clonal vines. The grapes were smaller than those of today’s Muscat Blanc à Petits Grains. For Florence Monferran, these old vines represented more than an agricultural plot to be brought back into production: they provided a link with older practices and plant material. Her aim was not to recreate a vanished wine, but to use archival evidence to explore what an old wine might have been like.
Bringing an Abandoned Vineyard Back to Life
An abandoned vineyard cannot simply be put back into production. In Mireval, the first step was to plough the soil during the first year to remove the other plants that had taken hold. But the most important part of the restructuring involved pruning.
On one of the two plots, the vines had been left to themselves for so long that they had returned to a sprawling, ground-hugging form. They literally had to be brought back upright. Because machinery was difficult to use around the fragile vines, part of the work had to be done by hand, particularly around the individual plants. After the first year, the winemaker decided to stop ploughing. She observed the natural emergence of clover, which is rich in nitrogen, followed by a gradual return of biodiversity.
The “restructuring” was therefore primarily an exercise in restoration: restoring the vineyard’s ability to stand upright, rather than immediately seeking to maximise production.
Old Grape Varieties: Preserve or Reinvent Them?
Her choice of old grape varieties follows directly from her work as a historian. Florence Monferran had discovered in the archives a particularly rich history of unfortified Muscat, especially during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Together with her partner, she therefore produced an unfortified Muscat without added SO₂, seeking to approach the practices described in the historical documents she had studied.
The experiment was not intended to recreate some hypothetical “lost taste”. An old wine cannot be reproduced exactly: production conditions have changed, the climate has changed, and the grape varieties themselves have evolved through clonal selection. Rather, it was a historical experiment applied to the vineyard: taking what the archives can tell us and confronting it with the realities of the land.
Muscat long held an important place in the history of winegrowing in the Languedoc. It contributed, she points out, to the region’s wealth and reputation, reaching royal tables and those of the papacy in Avignon. After the Second World War, its production became increasingly widespread, as winegrowing moved towards a more industrial model.
Muscat à Petits Grains: Far More Than a Sweet Wine
One of the central ideas behind her work is precisely to move Muscat beyond the image attached to it. The grape variety is often associated exclusively with vin doux naturel: sweet, rich and full-bodied. Yet, the winemaker points out, it can produce a wide range of wines: dry, off-dry, sparkling or made through skin maceration.
This diversity of styles is particularly interesting as wine consumption in France changes. She observes a shift towards white wines and lower-alcohol wines, and even alcohol-free wines — and hopes that distinctive varieties such as Muscat will find a place in this changing landscape.
The grape variety thus becomes a living form of heritage: an ancient history, but also material to be explored in the present.
What the Archives Do Not Tell You About Winegrowing in the Languedoc
The most important discovery, ultimately, was not a technical one. On entering these vineyards, Florence Monferran says she rediscovered a “connection with the land”. She describes reconnecting with something fundamental, with the rhythms of nature and with values she had not previously experienced in quite the same way.
The experience also showed her the everyday reality of the profession. You have to go into the vineyards when it rains, when it is cold, when it is windy or when temperatures are extremely high. You have to intervene at precisely the right moment, then move on to harvesting, winemaking and trade fairs.
With harvests taking place ever earlier as a result of climate change, the situation becomes even more complicated. In southern France, harvesting starts very early, even as winemakers are expected to continue welcoming tourists. A winemaker therefore has “ten different jobs”, she says, all of them extremely demanding. An abandoned vineyard is consequently not simply heritage to be saved: it also represents a particularly demanding daily workload.
Low Yields in Languedoc Winegrowing: A Deliberate Choice
The difficulties also became apparent in the figures. The two plots covered a total of 2.5 hectares, but not all the vines had survived the years of neglect: there were too few plants to make full use of the area.
Production was deliberately kept low. Some harvests were allowed to reach over-ripeness, to the point where yields were no longer really taken into account. This was not an attempt to maximise profitability, but to pursue another objective: experimentation, reflection and contributing to the revitalisation of the sector.
Around the vineyards, Florence Monferran also developed events, signage and activities to showcase the history of the producers and terroirs. The revival was therefore not limited to making wine: the vineyards and their history also had to be made visible.
Profitability: A Fragile Wine Business Model, Even at Break-Even
This is one of the most important limitations of the approach. Florence Monferran achieved her initial objective: breaking even and not losing money. As long as she covered her costs, she could continue the experiment.
But this model depended on particular circumstances. Coopers gave her barrels, and she benefited from many forms of generosity that helped make the experiment possible. As soon as the wine had to be bottled, however, it also had to be sold.
She therefore had to learn about trade and sales, a side of the business far removed from her work as a historian — but one that allowed her to meet people from all walks of life. Today, she no longer handles distribution or attends trade fairs; only a small amount of production remains, which she reserves for long-standing customers. In her view, taking over abandoned vineyards cannot therefore, in itself, constitute a reliable economic model.
Frontignan and Clairette: A Languedoc Terroir at Risk
The paradox is particularly striking in Frontignan and the surrounding hinterland, where Florence Monferran sees vineyards being uprooted or abandoned even though these lands cope well with climatic conditions. She points to the ancient terroir of Clairette du Languedoc, a grape variety whose archaeological traces she dates back to the first century BC: deeply rooted soils with a genuine capacity to withstand heat.
The problem is therefore not solely climatic. It is also economic, and linked to the transfer of land ownership and the transmission of practices. The region is going through a period of winegrowing decline, even though some of its terroirs could remain highly relevant in a context of climate warming.
Florence Monferran describes a unique, “exceptional” terroir, some of whose vineyards are nevertheless disappearing. She would like to see “a few mad people” come together to halt the process — without concealing the difficulty: today, the model is hard to make viable. Yet she refuses to reduce it to a financial transaction. “It is more than an economic act. It is an act of love for the vine, for everything this terroir carries.” Support from outside the wine sector itself would be needed, she believes, for such projects to survive over time. Old vines are not simply agricultural acreage: they carry history, grape varieties, practices and collective memory. And when a terroir disappears, it is not merely a form of production that is lost — a part of that history disappears with it.
2,500 Years of Viticulture in the Languedoc: A Historic Responsibility
The history of winegrowing is one of transformation, periods of prosperity and periods of decline. But Florence Monferran emphasises a much longer continuity: in the region, winegrowing dates back to antiquity and is said to have continued uninterrupted since its introduction by the Greeks and Romans. That represents around 2,500 years of winegrowing history.
This historical depth, she believes, gives present-day generations a particular responsibility. One generation of landowners and winemakers is now leaving the profession, while questions of succession, uprooting, economics and climate are converging.
The challenge is therefore no longer simply to reproduce the old cycles of planting and abandonment. It is to determine what can be passed on, and how it can be made to last. “None of this belongs to us except for a time,” she says. What matters is to extend the time we leave behind us and allow the vine to survive.
Climate Change: What If the Answer Lies in the Past?
Climate change reinforces this question. Florence Monferran says she was particularly struck by the intensity and duration of the heat this summer, even more than by the issue of drought itself.
Her experience has led her to look at certain traditional practices with fresh eyes. This is particularly true of agroforestry, which combines vines and trees. She instinctively draws a connection with practices known to the Greeks and Romans, when vines were “married” to the trees that supported them. For her, returning to the past is not simply an exercise in nostalgia: history can help identify “ways out” of today’s dead ends, in the face of an agricultural system heavily reliant on pesticides.
Agroecology and Vitiforestry: History as a Guide
Contemporary agriculture has accumulated a multitude of terms: regenerative agriculture, agroecology, biodynamics, vitiforestry. But behind these concepts, Florence Monferran often sees a return to older practices — a form of “old-fashioned common sense” based on observing the land. Even within biodynamics, she believes, some practices reflect this kind of traditional farming wisdom. Two approaches then come into conflict: on the one hand, an agro-industrial model based on monoculture; on the other, a return to mixed farming and practices built around soil fertility and the long-term sustainability of vineyards.
Her experience as a winemaker has changed the way she reads the archives. When she hears about cover cropping or other technical practices, she no longer approaches them solely as a historian: she now understands what these terms actually mean for the person working the vines. Vitiforestry, mixed farming and the search for old grape varieties may appear to be contemporary innovations; history shows that some of them have much deeper roots.
This does not mean mechanically returning to the past. Wines must now respond to different expectations, and Florence Monferran stresses the need to adapt historic forms of production to contemporary drinking habits, at a time when very high-alcohol wines no longer necessarily meet demand. History, in other words, does not provide recipes — but it does provide leads.
Preserving Languedoc Wine Heritage Beyond Wine Production
Today, Florence Monferran describes herself as a former winemaker: she no longer owns a vineyard, but still has wine ageing and continues her work of passing on knowledge about winegrowing heritage.
Her latest wine has been ageing for thirteen years and is still awaiting bottling. She is considering presenting it as a rare product, in particular to demonstrate the full range of what Muscat can offer. This gesture encapsulates her journey: the aim was never to produce more, but to understand, experiment, preserve and pass on. Her writing, research, presentations and practical experience now form, she says, “a whole” devoted to heritage and to the desire to extend its life for as long as possible.
At a time marked by abandoned vineyards, difficulties in passing farms and knowledge from one generation to the next, economic pressures and intensifying heat, this approach gives the revival of winegrowing another dimension. The question may no longer simply be how many vineyards can be replanted, but which terroirs, which grape varieties and which practices we still want to be able to pass on.
For Florence Monferran, the historian is a “watcher of time”: someone who looks to the past in an attempt to understand the future, and to find what might allow things to turn out “as little badly as possible”. Taking over an abandoned vineyard therefore guarantees neither profitability nor long-term survival. But in some places, it is a way of ensuring that what has endured for centuries does not simply disappear.
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