WINES (IN A NUTSHELL)
“Stunning grace and freshness...the world’s first Super Rhone.”
Terroir
It’s official: the terroir at La Verrière is rare and exciting. A convergence of factors provides the authentic signature to Chêne Bleu's wines, regardless of grape variety, winemaking or appellation. The ‘Fantastic Four’ of our vineyard deliver grapes with surprising finesse, and juice with great aging potential. We feel it’s a privilege to be working so far South yet so high up. This gift from Nature is the bedrock that drove us to relocate from so many other places in the world and dedicate ourselves with relentless obsession to making wine here.
Vineyard
Exceptional grapes are the product of an exceptional terroir curated in an exceptional way. The combination of Generous Geology, Amazing Altitude, Idyllic Isolation and Miraculous Microbiome is a wine-grower’s dream and results in huge untapped potential, but yields are low, and conditions are harsh. These conditions attract ‘extremophiles’ who are prepared to accept the challenges to achieve superior quality. In fact, these extreme conditions are the very reason we began to curate our vines so meticulously. We immediately introduced organic, biodynamic, regenerative and sustainable practices, shunning artificial fertilizers, insecticides and pesticides and adding cover crops and bees. Our mission: to harness the unusual environment and its biodiversity and corral it into the winery.
Winemaking
But how could we then turn this fantastic fruit into wonderful wine? Winemaking is an exercise in humility: handmade wines are costly and time-consuming to produce. This level of open-ended and high-risk entrepreneurship tested our faith in the vineyard’s potential.
We compensated for our inexperience by invoking our guiding principles of ‘Balance and Harmony’ at every stage of the winemaking process, making sure that the vineyard, the winery, the wines, the people and the surrounding nature remained in a healthy, sustainable equilibrium.
THE COLLECTION
We currently produce our flagship reds, Abélard and Héloïse, two whites, Aliot and Viognier, and one house rosé, called Le Rosé. We also make several special cuvées, including Astralabe [red] — named after the son of Abélard and Héloïse — and Rêve de Scipion, an homage to the dreaming protagonist of Cicero's "On the Republic". Occasionally, we have produced limited edition sets of wines, such as for the prestigious Pont des Arts company, which asks their favorite winemakers to interpret prominent contemporary works of art through wine. Each wine in our range reveals a different interpretation of the terroir.
Further reading
“Already regarded as one of the most significant producers in the Rhône valley.”
