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Spring — Canopy
Bud breaks to leaf, and the hill turns green overnight. The vines climb their wires toward a high, unhurried summer.
Estate Winery · The Côte Noir Hillside · Est. 1924
Domaine Côte Noir
A single hillside. A century of patience.
The Domaine
We farm one slope of black volcanic soil — no second vineyard, no shortcut, no blend to hide behind. What the hill gives in a year is all that we bottle. Some seasons that is barely a thousand cases. Some seasons, nothing at all.
I · The Slope
Black soil, a steep aspect, and a long cool dusk.
Côte Noir rises in one unbroken terrace above the valley fog. The dark basalt drinks the heat of the day and gives it back slowly, ripening the fruit long after the light has left the hill.
- Elevation
- 320–410 m
- Aspect
- South-east · 28° fall
- Soil
- Basalt over clay-limestone
- Planted
- 9.4 hectares, since 1924
II · The Year on the Vine
Four moments, one harvest.
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Late Summer — Véraison
Green berries blush and then darken. Sugar rises while the acidity holds, and the fruit quietly decides what kind of vintage this will be.
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Early Autumn — Ripeness
Now we taste the grapes each evening, walking the rows at dusk, waiting for the seeds to turn from green to chestnut brown.
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Harvest — By Night
We pick after midnight by headlamp, so the fruit arrives at the cellar cold. Every cluster is cut, carried, and sorted by hand.
III · The Cellar
Then we wait, in the dark, for years.
Beneath the slope the wine rests in French oak, inside a tunnel cut into the living rock where the temperature never moves. We are in no hurry. The hill was not, either.
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Barrels resting under the slope
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Months in oak, at the minimum
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Cases bottled in a generous year
IV · The Wines
Three vintages worth keeping. One we poured away.
Syrah & Mourvèdre
Iron, black cherry, and dried thyme. The tannins are still folded tight — this is a wine that asks for the decade ahead of it.
Syrah
Violets over warm stone, with a long saline close. The most open of the three, and the most generous on the table tonight.
No wine made
Smoke crossed the hill through September. We declared no vintage, left the barrels empty, and were glad to keep the name clean.
Syrah & Grenache
Cold-night fruit — graphite, blackcurrant, and a cool spine of acidity. It was built slowly, on purpose, to outlast all of us.
V · The Table
Sit on the terrace where the wine was born.
From May to October we open the old fermentation hall for seated tastings — six wines, the library vintages among them, poured by the same hands that farm the slope.
By appointment · Thursday to Sunday · The Côte Noir Estate
Reserve a tastingVI · The List
Our wine leaves the hill by invitation.
Production is small and spoken for early. Join the allocation list, and each spring we will write to you before the new release is offered to anyone else.