Caroline Frey: A Dream of Freedom
Edouard Amoiel
11 septembre 2026
After twenty years dedicated to crafting great French wines, Caroline Frey chose Valais to begin a new chapter in her career. In Fully, amid the Petite Arvine grapes, steep terraces, and grape harvests, the winemaker rediscovers the elements she never truly left behind: the vineyard, the rhythms of the craft, and a certain sense of freedom.
During our interview, Caroline Frey apologizes, gets up, disappears into the cellar for a few moments, comes back, and then leaves again. It’s harvest season, and here in Fully, the grapes take priority. This scene alone could sum up her new adventure. There she is, standing among the vats. She keeps an eye on things, tastes the wine, moves bins around, and heads back out to the vineyards. And when asked what the harvest means to her, she instinctively refuses to give it any more importance than other times of the year. “It’s one of the events, but above all, it’s a continuation of what we’ve just done. And we know that after this, there are still quite a few important events ahead that we can’t afford to miss.”
Before the vineyard, horseback riding
Caroline Frey was born in Champagne. Her father is not a winemaker. But the purchase of a few vineyards when she was still a child allowed her to be part of the world of wine, even from a distance. So she is familiar with the wine presses, the vineyards, and the bottles carefully stored in the family cellar. However, her first language isn’t that of wine but that of nature. As a child, she spent her days outdoors. The family home bordered a forest, and Caroline would sometimes disappear into it until nightfall. There were no phones back then, and not really any set routes either.
Before the vineyard, there were horses. Horseback riding became important enough that she considered making it her career. She even put her studies on hold and earned her high school diploma through correspondence courses. Until one of those famous “aha” moments—which she seems to love—came along and turned everything upside down. Horseback riding would remain a passion. She had to find something else. It was her mother who innocently suggested an idea: since she loved nature, plants, and the earth so much, why not try winemaking? Caroline Frey gave it a try. And changed course.
“Your daughter is ready.”
“Looking back on the choices I’ve made, I realize in hindsight that they’ve had a major impact on my life—something I hadn’t fully grasped at the time. ” Caroline began studying the sciences—organic chemistry, plant physiology, and plant biochemistry—before enrolling in the Faculty of Oenology in Bordeaux. There was one unusual aspect to her story: when she arrived, she actually knew very little about wine. Bordeaux would set the story in motion.
At university, she met Denis Dubourdieu, a leading figure in French oenology and a renowned specialist in white wines. He became her professor, then her mentor. She worked with him for six months in 2002 and returned the following year. Meanwhile, her father took over Château La Lagune in the Haut-Médoc. Caroline hesitated. Should she work with her father? Join the family estate? She would have preferred to continue working with Dubourdieu and asked him for advice. The answer was unequivocal. La Lagune needed to be rebuilt. An opportunity like this would never come again. Dubourdieu called her father. “Your daughter is ready.” Ready for what? To take over La Lagune. The year was 2004.
Bordeaux, Rhône, Burgundy
She’s 25 years old. She has little professional experience. She’s a young woman in a field that’s still very male-dominated, and—not least of all—she’s the owner’s daughter. Almost no one was told she was coming. No office had been set up, no grand announcement made. “I dive into projects with a certain carefree attitude, without even realizing it at first.” This arrival without a roadmap forced her, above all, to carve out her own place. She had to join and work with the teams, and earn their trust rather than impose herself. What followed would span twenty years. First, La Lagune. Then the Paul Jaboulet Aîné estates in the Rhône Valley starting in 2006. And finally, Burgundy in 2015. At the heart of this family adventure is also her father, the driving force behind the acquisition of these estates. Without his intuition and dedication, she acknowledges, this journey would likely not have unfolded in the same way. Radically different climats, soils, slopes, and methods. “I know the climats where it rains, the ones where it’s dry, the vines that get too much water, those that don’t get enough, the vines on flat ground, the ones on hillsides, the small vats, the large vats. ” An immense toolkit that she’ll take with her—all the way to Valais.
We’d have to go back a few years, though, and revisit Denis Dubourdieu. One evening, during one of those grand dinners where the oenologist likes to open bottles for his students, a Petite Arvine from Marie-Thérèse Chappaz was served. Dubourdieu was thrilled. For him, Petite Arvine is one of the world’s greatest white grape varieties. Caroline Frey will never truly forget those words. In 2015, a chance encounter opened a new door for her. A few days later, she was offered the chance to take over a tiny plot in Fully that nobody really wanted. For her, it was perfect. So she pruned. She worked alone. She got her hands back in the soil. “I almost wanted to build a cabin in the vineyards.”
Fully’s Call
Over the years, a few additional plots have expanded this hidden gem in Valais. Caroline Frey, however, continues to manage her French estates. The kilometers add up—as many as 100,000 a year, she says with a smile, acknowledging that this carbon footprint is hard to justify. Then Benoît Dorsaz called. The winemaker from Fully wanted to retire and was looking for someone to whom he could pass on his estate. It’s the end of 2024, and for Caroline Frey, the decision is immediate. One problem remains: how can she add a Valais estate to a schedule that already has no room to spare? She has no idea. She accepts anyway. Head down, once again.
A few months later, life abruptly reshuffled the deck. A serious neurological illness left her bedridden for several weeks. She would recover. But something had changed. So she made a decision that, just a few months earlier, would have seemed impossible to her: to leave the French estates to which she had devoted a large part of her life. Not because she no longer loved them. Perhaps precisely because she loved them enough to know that the path had led her somewhere.
When a Dream Comes True
Caroline doesn’t walk away from a story that’s still unfolding. So, in Fully, she has to come up with a new one. The estate she took over from Benoît Dorsaz already has a solid foundation, particularly in organic and biodynamic viticulture. The winemaker therefore has no intention of turning everything upside down. “I don’t want to change just for the sake of change. You have to be humble in this business. But at some point, I might say to myself: ‘Hey, maybe we could try something different here.’”
This perspective has given her something precious: the freedom not to view habits as absolute truths. Freedom. The word comes up in our conversation without any prior planning. Then it comes up again. And again. Creative freedom, freedom of movement, freedom of thought. What does Caroline Frey want to do next in Fully? The answer, in the end, can be summed up in just a few words. “I want to make great wines.”
Today she has six hectares, a wine-growing legacy patiently built up before her time, and that rather rare experience that has allowed her to encounter nearly every possible scenario. But above all, she has rediscovered a different way of life—one that’s more intimate. More physical. A few meters away, grapes are still waiting to be put into the vat. Caroline Frey has to get back to work. She is then asked when the next wine will come along that can bring tears to her eyes, like La Chapelle 2022, which remains etched in her memory. She smiles because she has no idea. And fortunately so, because a dream that comes true too quickly wouldn’t really be a dream at all. In Fully, Caroline Frey has just begun a new one.
