VITAMONT

Alain brugalières, son and grandson of farmers – and also a true epicurean – realised that in order to survive, the agricultural world needed to do things differently.

“For nature to go on being bountiful, we must protect it and maintain the quality of our farmland – and in this way we ourselves will consume more healthily.”

— Alain Brugalières

At the time, people were just beginning to talk about “ORGANIC” farming. The principal aim was to protect both human health and that of the environment. This promise went straight to the heart of this young, activist businessman, and he started off by selling juice from locally harvested apples and prunes that had been pressed in Monflanquin, in the heart of Lot et Garonne.

It was a simple, sensible idea: to process fully ripe fruit and vegetables from the region and thus offer the ORGANIC food network natural juices and drinks that had been minimally processed, to ensure they remained as natural as possible and retained maximum flavour.

“I started out in a little workshop that was just 6000 square foot, using a manual press. In those days I was only producing 2,000 bottles a day… At a time when the only rule in business was maximum productivity, making ORGANIC produce wasn’t the obvious choice. You had to have a certain amount of belief to go for quality and health instead.