Tommaso, Malia

The Impact:

⛰️ Scale: 8 Hectares

🤝 Human Impact: 1 person and friends

🌱 Philosophy: Organic Conversion

🌳 Biodiversity: Agroforestry, permanent grassing of plots, essentially manual labour
Sunrise over Malia's vineyard with trees in the background
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Tommaso Castelnovo standing next to a large wooden door with a sign on it

The Story

My name is Tommaso Castelnovo. I am 31 years old. I grew up in the south of France, near Nîmes, but I am of Italian origin. I crossed the Alps with my family when I was only 3 years old.

I got into wine partly thanks to my family, and partly thanks to my Master's degree in hospitality and catering. By the end of my first higher studies, my values were no longer aligned with the hotel sector. I therefore decided to resume my studies and train in the vineyard and winemaking in Montpellier.

After several experiences in different Estates and a 2-year break as a wine merchant, I decided, at the end of 2023, to create my own estate: MALIA (an old Italian word defining something or someone seductive, spellbinding, captivating...).

I have 3 Border Collies (Fly, Rex, and Pato) at the estate and one cat (Minet) at home.

Philosophy

Because for me it was not conceivable to work otherwise than organically, for my health and that of others, and to approach agriculture differently: more respectful of the environment, fauna, and flora, but also “restorative” by bringing life back into the soils and creating biodiversity hamlets around and in the vines.

As for the wines, I allow only small amounts of sulfur to achieve living wines, without anything that could mask their flavours and typicity. And of course, because it is much healthier to drink wines composed of 99.9% grapes!

To make the task a little more complicated, I work without a tractor, to avoid soil compaction, but with a quad, and most of the work is done manually.
Sunrise over Malia's vineyard with trees in the background

The Vineyard: Malia

A small estate of 3 hectares, located in the Vaunage plain to the West of Nîmes, in the commune of Saint Côme et Maruejols (Gard).

The vines are managed under organic farming, and the work is essentially manual to respect a very clear philosophy: respect for the vines, the soils, the fauna and the flora, in short, for living things. For these reasons, in addition to the "simple" viticultural and winemaking project, experiments are conducted in parallel, such as planting trees around and within the vineyard and no-tilling while maintaining spontaneous grass cover.