“Pruning the vines, a biblical gesture”
As a young girl, she dreamed of being a doctor. Today, it is with passion that she takes care of her vineyard and the team of eight employees with whom she works every day. However, the road has been tough. Mother of four children, Caroline Perromat began training in oenology late in life, once her youngest daughter was in school. For fifteen years, she faced the challenges of commercial development in a Bordeaux wine estate, before joining her husband Xavier to support him in the takeover of the family estate: Château de Cérons. “The company was in difficulty, we fought like crazy to get it back afloat. » It is necessary to modernize the operation and restructure the distribution of the 150,000 annual bottles – white, red and sweet wines, sold from 9 to 30 euros.
At the start of 2020, the balance finally found, the pandemic suddenly stopped exports. “Frost, drought, these are part of the risks of the job. But there, the difficulties continued: a lasting drop in consumption after Covid, recruitment difficulties, taxes on the American market… Paralyzed, I said to myself: “You don’t have the shoulders, you’re going to sink the company .” » Breast cancer occurs. “I understood that I had to rely on others, and I hired one of our interns. Little by little, with everything we had learned at the EDC in terms of management – patience, listening, teaching, etc. – we gained the loyalty of a team of young thirty-somethings. They repaid our trust in a great way. And we overcame the crisis. »
Organic certification, currently being completed, constitutes a new challenge: “We must accept, as in 2023, losing 60% of our harvest due to mildew. But our vineyard adjoins the village, there are 35 babies every morning in the crèche in front of the house. Heavy chemical treatments are no longer possible. » At 56, Caroline says she is convinced: Christian social thought, discovered in the EDC team, helped her seek coherence between her professional activity and her life of faith. “Knowing how to prune to produce fruit… In our plots, every day, we pronounce the words of the Bible. »
