Some news does not merely inform: it crowns. This week, the Lafage family was named “Estate of the Year” by the Bettane & Desseauve Guide 2027 in France. One could simply pause there, offer polite congratulations, and close the file. But certain honours deserve to have their genesis illuminated, for they speak to something larger than the success of a single vineyard: they speak to what it takes, today, to build a brand that moves through time without ever freezing within it.
It has been exactly five years since VitaBella began working alongside the Lafage teams on their brand strategy. Five years is neither a sprint nor an eternity — it is precisely the span a vision needs to stop being an intention and become a certainty. This award, then, is not an ending. It is a milestone on a trajectory that has no intention of stopping.
What this recognition teaches us
A strong brand is never built on good intentions alone. It is built on teams who refuse the easy path, on a long-term vision without which nothing ever truly takes root, on a standard of quality that never rests content with itself, on a fresh eye capable of tipping a respected estate into a desired brand — and, above all, on an ambition that refuses to feed on the endless refrain of crisis and a tomorrow harder than today.
This is precisely what Lafage embodies. Tucked away in the furthest reaches of Roussillon — a geography that elsewhere might have served as an excuse for quietness — the estate has chosen boldness as its method. It took daring to launch a rosé campaign as bright and unguarded as “Miraflors, j’adore!” for the 2026 vintage. It took daring to commit to regenerative viticulture, when so many others still make do with the vocabulary of caution. It took daring to craft low-alcohol wines, like La Fabuleuse at 9°, when the comfort of convention would have sufficed. And it took daring, finally, to safeguard an entire heritage — that of the wines of Banyuls and Collioure — through the recent acquisition of GICB born as much of strategy as of loyalty to a history.
Boldness as the grammar of a brand
What strikes one most, in this accumulation of initiatives, is not their number but their coherence. Each, alone, might have been a single gesture, a passing flourish of communication. Together, they compose a grammar: that of a family house which has understood that terroir alone no longer makes a brand — that it also takes the courage to tell it differently, to let it live in the present rather than preserve it in the past.
Five years after the first day of our shared work, this title of Estate of the Year comes as no surprise. It is a confirmation. And if I may offer a confidence, it is also a promise — for I already know what comes next, and it will, once again, surprise us all. Congratulations to all the Lafage team. You rock!
Contact Guillaume Jourdan via LinkedIn
