Part One: Discovering Tempier

In 1988 I read a book by the wine merchant Kermit Lynch, called ‘Adventures on the Wine Route’.  In this book he talked about the winemakers he met, mostly in France, and the stories about their wineries.  One of the chapters was about the Peyraud family, of Domaine Tempier.  Reading this chapter would change my life in a remarkable way.

I had travelled extensively in France since 1983, when I married Annie Bougoin, who was from Poitiers.  We travelled mostly in the southwest of France, near where her family was from.  In 1985, we went to Provence, in the southeast.  I immediately fell in love with that region of France…the people, the landscape, the food and the wine.  Over the next few years I learned more about the wines of Provence, like Cotes du Rhone, Chateauneuf du Pape, Les Baux de Provence and others.  But I’d never heard of wines from the region of Bandol until I read Kermit Lynch’s book. 

In it, he describes the remarkable winery of Domaine Tempier and the Peyraud family.  Domaine Tempier had been a winery for over one hundred years.  In the 1930s it was owned by Alphonse Tempier, a leather merchant.  The Domaine was a side business of his.  In 1936, his daughter Lulu married Lucien Peyraud.  Alphonse Tempier gave the couple Domaine Tempier as a wedding gift.

Domaine Tempier had won gold medals in the past, but the region had suffered greatly.  First there was the phyloxera bug (in the 1860s), which killed off all the vines of France.    French vines were grafted onto American root stock and this seemed to solve this problem.  But when Lucien started to study the history of Bandol wines, he discovered that in the past the wines were made up of mostly the Mourvedre grape, which is a low yielding grape that does very well in this region.  Winemakers in the previous decades had shied away from the Mourvedre and planted higher yielding grapes, such as Grenache.  Lucien made it his life’s work to return Bandol to its former glory and to get the French government to recognize it as an AOC (a designation that makes a wine region unique and to have it go by all sorts of rules) and to bring back the Mourvedre.  By 1941 he had accomplished his goal and Bandol became an AOC.  By the 1960s, his two sons, Jean Marie and Francois, were working with him at the Domaine, Jean Marie in the cellar making the wine and Francois in the vineyards tending the vines. 

By the late 1970s, Kermit Lynch was importing the wine to the US and it started to get a great reputation here.  Wine journalists, such as Robert Parker, praised the wine and it became pretty famous in America, especially here in the Bay Area where Kermit has his store. 

In 1987, some friends of mine started to meet every Thursday afternoon at the wine store, Singer and Foy, in San Francisco.  They sold a lot of Kermit’s wines, including Tempier.  After reading the book, I had to try some of the wines. I immediately fell in love with the wine.  It was all I loved in a wine…delicious, fruity, full, powerful and earthy flavors.  All natural, never fined or filtered.  It was ‘Provence In A Bottle’.  I knew that the next time I went to Provence I would have to go to Domaine Tempier and see the place for myself. 

In the summer of 1989, Annie and I took our annual trip to France.  Before I left, I wrote the Domaine and asked if we could come by for a tasting (this was pre-email and we actually wrote letters!).  In a few weeks I got a response from Jean Marie Peyraud, the wine maker, to come on by anytime.  Just call ahead and he would meet us there. 

On a lovely summer day in late June, 1989, we drove into the small town of Le Plan du Castellet and then found the driveway that led to the Domaine.  The driveway is lined by giant platane (Sycamore) trees that are all over this part of France.  On the driveway was an old man, walking along with the aid of his cane, out for his morning stroll apparently.  I drove by him and asked where I could find Jean Marie and he pointed to a nearby building, which was the office.  This old man, of course, was the famous Lucien Peyraud, now retired from active wine making at the age of nearly 80. 

Jean Marie met us with a big smile and a small basket with several wine glasses.  He said to follow him and took us around the big house and to the cellars.  Down the stairs we went to a huge room with giant foudres.  These are huge oak casks, some very old, that hold the wine for aging (up to 18 months for the red wines).  We went around to many of the foudres, where there is a little spigot sticking out, like a small faucet, where you can pour wine into your glass.  Jean Marie was obviously very passionate about his wine and spoke in poetic terms about the different cuvees, the Cuvee Classique, the Cuvee Speciale, La Tourtine, La Migoua and Le Cabassaou (the last three being specific vineyards which are bottled separately).  Tasting these wines right out of the barrel, some being just 9 months old, was a revelation.  All of the cuvees were stupendous.   Jean Marie even got some bottles of current vintages for us to try.  Oh, lovely!  We bought a few bottles to take with us (we had just started a 5 week trip and were going to Annie's hometown, so her family members could drink these wonderful wines). 

Jean Marie was very friendly and gave us, just two wine lovers whom he’d never met before, a lot of his time and energy.  I think it helped that Annie was with me, who spoke French, of course.  We left hoping we’d come back someday, but not necessarily expecting to anytime soon. 

Over the next 2 years, Jean Marie and I kept up a correspondence (mostly by fax) and became I guess what you would call pen pals.  So when Annie and I decided to go back to Provence and to visit in 1991, he said you must come back to the Domaine and we will have a meal together.  That meal would prove to be the best of my life.