Lilian is a wine lover: he naturally evolved towards technical training in viticulture and oenology. In the meantime, he began to realize the full extent of the nurseryman’s role in providing high quality raw material to winemakers.
In 1998, he established his activity using an existing model: the hyperproduction of plants. In 1999, already known for speaking is mind, Lilian Bérillon became the president of the Vaucluse wood and vine plant producer’s union, the Vaucluse being the primary plant producing region in France.
Lilian began to realize that there was a serious sanitary problem in the vineyards. Wood and vine diseases started to appear. One started to evoke the fact that some vineyards were withering away for no apparent reason. Lilian Bérillon questions a large number of practices applied by the entire industry and also those used by some winemakers. He attempted to convey his vision of using qualitative plant material to an industry who he felt were largely responsible for this situation.
In 2003, having become tired of the industry’s immobility, Lilian resigned as National Vice President of the union. That was it, he decided to pursue his convictions by creating a new model: a model that respected the plant material being delivered to winemakers who were eager to produce wines that were an expression of their terroirs and have to face climate change.
Lilian knows that one of the essential parameters to establish sustainable vineyards is high quality plant material. Since 2007, his model is therefore uncompromising: massal selections rich in diversity and in an irreproachable sanitary state, rootstocks from trellised mother-vines for a better quality of wood, a whip and tongue graft to better respect the sap flow, a nursery committed to an environmental approach, a drastic sorting to keep only the most beautiful plants and the hot water treatment applied to the whole production to finish eliminating any sanitary risk.
In 2019, a new page in the history of the nursery is written! By acquiring a property of 85 ha, Lilian Bérillon will be able to reach the total autonomy he was looking for to finalize his production model. The site of La Manufacture now allows him to have the necessary land to accommodate about 15ha of annual nursery and to establish the mother vineyards necessary for the sought-after autonomy.
