Chateau De Bousval

The promise of exclusivity and quality

TEXT: ANTOINETTE VAN HAM | PHOTOS © LEOPOLD AMORY & MICHEL VERHAEGHE DE NAEYER

It is a nascent adventure whose aroma of success is already wafting about. A beautiful story therefore one worth telling. With spontaneous enthusiasm and the passionate and sensitive vision of the respect we owe to nature, Michel Verhaeghe de Naeyer decided six years ago to revive his dormant lands with a new wealth: A Vineyard.

It was a landowner’s dream, a crazy bet like getting into wild horse breeding without having ever ridden a horse. Yet, it was a well thought out challenge. Months of observation, weeks and weeks of patience, uninterrupted days of work in the vineyard, the humbling experience of the first harvest, but above all stood the desire to capture the essence of this experience in a glass of wine.

Today it is a remarkable company, a brilliant team of professionals who possess the audacity to nurture the land to it’s most fruitful condition, through viticulture whose exceptional contributions have no higher measure than understanding nature’s demands. The vine flourishes, freely and happily, with micro- organisms, natural predators and selected companion leguminous plants and grasses.

The viticulture is done in a way that looks to the future, the vineyard employs the process of organic farming and flourishes within the footsteps of Biodynamic farming and refreshing gulps of oxygen in the form of permaculture.

These few hectares in Wallonia Brabant are simply breathtaking. As the new wines of Wallonia emerge on the horizon, an already discernable movement, Bousval has earned a significant place among them; the fruits of a time in which the rules are being re-examined by the development of new ‘terroirs’.

The construction of the chai – the vineyard’s wine storage facility – due to open in May 2019, encapsulates the philosophy of the Bousval estate through its visionary, ecologically-responsible architecture. It is the dreamchild of Charly Wittock’s architectural practice AWAA sitting at the border of the the vines, melding with it’s natural surroundings. It gives a glimpse of a true coming together of the living earth and what it produces, man and his traditions, in one word:magnificent.

The harvest of 2018 was joyous and generous, it’s grapes of a superb quality. It began with one landowner’s original dream of a glass of wine, which is where Bousval is now – a story of which you can be sure to hear more of in the future.

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