Domaine Tempier

The Free Bacchus Story

Mourvèdre is thick-skinned, late-ripening, low-yielding and had largely been abandoned before the appellation was created in 1941. Almost nobody was taking it seriously. Lucien Peyraud thought the limestone garrigue of the Provençal hills was exactly where it belonged, and spent decades making the case.

He was right, and Domaine Tempier is the estate that established Bandol as a serious region on the strength of it. The family's influence reached well beyond France. Through Lulu Peyraud's friendship with Alice Waters, Tempier became part of the American food and wine conversation of the 1970s and 80s. The third generation now runs the estate under Ecocert certified organic standards, maintaining the farming Lucien established and that the appellation's later converts gradually adopted.

The Cuvée Spéciale and the single-vineyard La Migoua and La Tourtine bottlings have drawn 96 points from Wine Advocate and represent the benchmark for what Bandol achieves — tannic, earthy, structured for a decade or more, and unlike anything made outside this small appellation.

These are wines that taste as though no decision has ever been taken for commercial rather than qualitative reasons. That is a difficult impression to fake over three generations, and it comes largely from the farming.