VitiFurtif
Beaujolais, Ternand, France
 

Martin Thiberge didn't come up through a winemaking family, he arrived in the Beaujolais from the west coast of France with a professional diploma in wine and spirits trade and a sommelier qualification behind him.
 

After a few years working as a sales rep in Limoux, he got his first taste of the vineyard and cellar working with Nicolas Carmarans in the Aveyron, and picked up cidermaking along the way with Gilbert Lavanant. He settled in the south Beaujolais in 2021, doing seasonal vineyard work and training alongside the area's natural winemakers while running the Cave Nature shop in Bois d'Oingt and working part time as a sommelier in Lyon.
 

In 2022 he made his first cuvée on a borrowed plot of Gamay from friends and neighbours Julien Merle and Nathalie Banes. By 2023 he'd gone full time, taking on 1 hectare of Gamay and half a hectare of Chardonnay in Ternand, under the name VitiFurtif.
 

His approach in the vineyard leans on observation over intervention, light soil work, fresh manure, rock dust and winter grazing to build up the soil's life, with organic certification expected in 2024. In the cellar it's much the same philosophy, little to no intervention, no additives, nothing energy intensive, just Gamay left to speak for itself.