Bandol is synonymous with rose and despite the high price, demand outstrips supply of Domaine Tempier rose every year. Their red, however, is another story, yet I can’t help think wine drinkers are missing a trick by not taking their southern French odyssey a little further and drinking a bottle of Tempier’s Bandol rouge.
Domaine Tempier’s vineyards are a mix of clay and limestone, ensuring drainage and water holding capacity. Balanced is the word. The south of France can be insufferably hot in summer, indeed, the hottest I have ever been was on the Atlantic side of France, Cognac in 2003. Winters are bitter, cold, windy and dry. Days warm, nights cool. Perhaps it’s these opposites that ultimately define Domain Tempier’s wine style of refined wildness. You don’t taste the heat and you don’t feel the cold, they are, in effect, elegant and balanced wines with a long plane of flavour.
Take a whiff of the 2019 rouge and it’s startling how immediate the intimation of place is. Smoke, campfire, sage, cherry, lavender, strawberry, Chambord, kirsch, graphite, fennel and thyme. Not one nuance dominates, they are all sprinkled together. Commonly at wine tastings I often hear fellow tasters say something like “could only be Volnay”, as if Volnay’s style is utterly transparent, defined and definitive. Quite often I don’t agree with these statements. But it must be said; Domaine Tempier 2019 rouge, mostly Mourvèdre, is typical and as a benchmark estate a defining style of Bandol.
If the aromatics were no surprise, the palate certainly was. Medium bodied and, like the nose, remarkably complex and detailed. Ferrous notes, sweet fruits with a tang, enveloped by smoky, volcanic, mineral, paprika and truffle. As a vintage, 2019 is terrific, with piquant acidity and long tobacco-inflected tannins. Poised and balanced, there is not a hair out of place and the pitch is perfect. I suppose, I was expecting something burley, chewy, textured and extracted – a wine from the south.
The debate about how a wine should taste will go forever. In my 25 years of loving wine, the most profound evolution in wine is that of texture, weight and mouthfeel. The notion that flavour and presence not be diminished, whilst elegance and grace enhanced. Burgundy and Bordeaux no longer have a monopoly on elegance and poise. Domaine Tempier’s 2019 rouge is a taste of place as startlingly precise as any from the grandest of crus. Ethereal, graceful and mineral, with tertiary notes reminding you of the refined wildness of Bandol’s translucent landscape. At three years old, the 2019 is still a baby, but considering the wine’s vivid flavours, the vitality of its presence and the harmony of constituents, a long and beautiful life awaits.
Domaine Tempier Bandol Rouge 2019
