Some plots you inherit, others you choose. Ours, the very first, was a plot nobody wanted: a steep terrace where the red stone shows through as soon as you scratch the soil. In 1928, Étienne planted it anyway. Almost a century later, these old vines give barely one bunch per plant, and the most moving wine the estate has ever made. We called it La Première Pierre.
« We did not make this cuvée to sell wine. We made it because those vines deserved it. »
0.8 hectares, not one more. Vines close to a hundred years old, pruned short, sinking their roots into the rolled pebbles. Here the vine struggles — and it is precisely that struggle that concentrates everything: the fruit, the minerality, that salty tension that makes your mouth water. Biodynamic farming is not a marketing line for us. It is simply the only way to respect a soil this alive.
The grapes are picked berry by berry, in the cool of the morning. Then comes patience: 24 months of ageing in French oak demi-muids, unhurried, unfined, with only a light filtration. We taste, we wait, we taste again. The wine tells us when it is ready — not the other way round.
On the nose, blackberry and violet, pepper, the warm stone of a summer evening. On the palate it is dense and silky at once, with velvet tannins and a finish that goes on and on. A red for contemplation, to drink today, and one that will keep improving for twenty years.
The 2021 vintage is limited to 940 bottles, numbered by hand, and it will not be repeated. It is available by allocation, on request: La Première Pierre. And if you visit the estate, ask Clémence: she keeps the list.