Domaine Tempier

Domaine Tempier is the estate that established Bandol as a serious wine region, and it did so on the back of Mourvèdre — a thick-skinned, late-ripening grape that performs with unusual depth and longevity in the limestone garrigue soils of the Provençal hills but that almost nobody else was taking seriously when Lucien Peyraud began championing it in the 1940s and 1950s.

The Peyraud family's influence on Bandol — and, through Alice Waters' friendship with Lulu Peyraud, on the American food and wine culture of the 1970s and 1980s — gave Tempier a cultural resonance that extends well beyond the region. The estate is now managed by the third generation of the family under Ecocert certified organic standards, maintaining the farming philosophy that Lucien established and that the appellation's later converts have gradually adopted.

The Cuvée Spéciale and the single-vineyard La Migoua and La Tourtine Mourvèdre-dominant blends have drawn 96 points from Wine Advocate and represent the benchmark for what Bandol red wine achieves at its most serious — tannic, earthy, structured for a decade or more of aging, and unlike anything produced outside this small appellation.

Tempier is one of those estates whose wines taste like no decision has ever been taken for commercial rather than qualitative reasons. That consistency is itself a product of the farming.