Danis Bessières: Back to the Retrofuture

Meet the Cahors natural wine scion making the most of a heritage of Nature et Progrès organic viticulture, oxygenative winemaking - and (some) machine harvesting.

Danis Bessières is the young head of Domaine de l’Antenet, a 10ha Cahors estate converted to Nature et Progrès organic agriculture in 1983 by his grandfather, Pierre Bessières, and run by his father, Philippe Bessières, since the late 1980s. A longtime friend of Claude Courtois, Bessières père vinified machine-harvested fruit on native yeasts, with no s…