Founded in 1956 when Robert Milan planted vines at the foot of the Alpilles as a modest agricultural complement to his work as a notary, Domaine Milan began as a survival-driven farm selling fruit and bulk wine into a quiet regional market. The inflection point came in 1986, when his son Henri abandoned law studies and returned to the family property with a radically different vision. While generations before him had farmed the land, Henri sought to transform it. Rejecting the chemical viticulture then common in Provence, he progressively eliminated synthetic inputs, achieved organic certification in 1998, and embraced biodynamic farming at a time when few in the region were willing to take the risk.

Long before “natural wine” became fashionable, Henri was fermenting with indigenous yeasts, minimizing sulfur, and experimenting with amphora — guided not by trend, but by conviction.

Today, the estate spans 20 hectares across a rare geological mosaic of blue marl, limestone, clay, and sandstone soils at the meeting point of Mediterranean warmth and the cleansing Mistral wind. Detailed soil studies in the 1990s confirmed the exceptional vitality of parcels such as La Carrée, capable of producing white wines of remarkable mineral tension and depth. The vineyards are dry-farmed, permanently covered with vegetation, minimally tilled, and in select parcels worked by horse — reinforcing the philosophy that the domaine is a living ecosystem rather than a production site. In the cellar, intervention is restrained and intentional: native fermentations, low or no sulfur depending on cuvée, parcel-by-parcel vinification, and aging in concrete, large oak, or clay amphorae to preserve texture without masking terroir.

The resulting wines are vibrant yet grounded — Mediterranean herbs, saline lift, stone fruit, and a kinetic energy that reflects living soils. Domaine Henri Milan stands today as one of Provence’s earliest and most enduring biodynamic benchmarks, a reference estate for those who believe great wine begins underground and is revealed, not manufactured.