When he was still a teenager, he worked alongside his parents, dreaming of saving their estate.

The crisis of the early 2000s, which wiped so many farms off the map, didn’t allow him to succeed. But it did strengthen his vocation.
“My father stopped in 2002, when I was 17. I couldn’t save the estate, but I became passionate about the vines,” he recalls. His passion led him into the field: nine years working in the vineyards, learning from the experience of his elders, to finally develop his own idea of the profession, based on respect for the soil, the environment and the landscape. “I realised that we were slaves to a system based on chemicals. I learned from specialists in agroecology, agroforestry, biodynamics and natural wine-making”, explains Frédéric Berne.

His estate, created in 2014 with three hectares in sharecropping at Château des Vergers, supplemented by one hectare of Morgon and one hectare of Chiroubles in property, now covers fifteen hectares, farmed organically or in conversion. He manages it with his brother Cédric, who owns part of the vineyard. The hectare and a half under agroforestry allows the trees to nourish the soil, and plant cover is favoured everywhere. “I don’t have any bare soil. This enables us to store energy and combat erosion”. The winegrower is also interested in plant physiology, as part of his commitment to working with healthy, living soil. “It’s all about the well-being of the plant, which involves respecting the flow of sap, a well-nourished soil and trees to protect against the heat,” he explains.

It was the realisation that his Lantignié vines were producing a wine on a par with his crus that led him to set up the Vignerons et Terroirs de Lantignié association in 2017. Today, there are around twenty members, all committed to promoting the village, creating a dynamic to instil a new spirit and enable new winegrowers to settle in.