Valentina Andrei
Valentina Andrei left her native Romania at the age of 20 after discovering the world of vineyards and wine in the famous Hungarian and Moldavian Tokaji. When she arrived in Switzerland in 2003, she quickly found herself at the Domaine de Beudon, with Marion and Jacques Granges, who took her under their wings. She trained at the agricultural school of Chateauneuf near Sion, then she continues to Changin where she becomes oenologist. During her internships, she discovered her passion for organic and biodynamic viticulture thanks to the Granges family. But in 2012, the desire to fly on her own is felt and she decides to start a fabulous adventure by creating her own domain. Not easy when you start from scratch! But the desire of the young vine grower allows her to start with a small hectare of vines scattered all over the Valais coast.
The most surprising thing in this story is the willingness of Valentina to move forward, in 2013 she vinified in a cuvage shared with a winemaker without having real freedom compared to his desires. As it did not suit her, she set out in search of finding a small cuvage and it is today in a nice small garage that she began to vinify her 2014 vintage ... Everything is to be created, she buys the vats as and when arrivals of grapes because she does not know the exact volume producing each parcel. Valentina is a fan of local Valais grapes, the small arvine, the paiën (savagnin), the white humagne, the red humagne, the cornalin ... Everything is vinified in micro-tank of 300 liters because it has only a small hectare of vines. She does not like the work of her destemmer and prefers to do everything by hand, all alone at night after the day of harvest to preserve whole grains that are partly a carbonic maceration. A true work of artist, come to discover it in the cellar 20G!
In his first vintage, the group Magnificients asked her to create a special vintage. Magnificients is the grouping of a football and wine fan, Nicolas Wuest, and several of his friends including Jean-Claude Favre (famous Valais winegrower), Carlo and Christine Crisci (great chef and owner of the famous restaurant Le Cerf in the canton of Vaud), François Gautier (sommelier at the Cerf) and an artist Étienne Krähenbühl.