Producer Provence, France
Château La Coste
Château La Coste is at Le Puy-Sainte-Réparade, about twenty minutes north of Aix-en-Provence, and there is nowhere else quite like it. The estate covers some 200 hectares of vines, cypresses, stone pines, olives and oak, with a Palladian country house at its centre dating from 1682 and a winemaking tradition on the site that goes back to Roman times. It is also, and this is what most people know it for, one of the most ambitious collections of contemporary art and architecture attached to any working vineyard anywhere.
The list of names is not a marketing flourish. The entrance gate and the Art Centre are by Tadao Ando. The wine cellar is by Jean Nouvel. There is a pavilion by Frank Gehry, originally built for the Serpentine Gallery and shown in London in 2008 before being installed here permanently. Oscar Niemeyer designed a pavilion and auditorium that was among the last projects of his life. Andy Goldsworthy's Oak Room is built into an old stone wall from around 1,200 pieces of Burgundian oak. There is work by Louise Bourgeois, Richard Serra, Sophie Calle, Susumu Shingu and Paul Matisse. You can walk the whole thing in an afternoon, and a good many people go for the art and leave with the wine.
The wine is not an afterthought. The estate was awarded organic certification in 2009 and the entire 200 hectares has been farmed organically since 2013. Since the 2022 harvest it has been fully certified biodynamic by Demeter. In practice that means green manure sown in the autumn, sheep grazing in spring and autumn, and horse-drawn tillage on the older parcels. In the cellar it means hand-harvesting, indigenous yeasts, cold tartaric stabilisation and very little sulphur. The first Demeter-certified wine off the estate was the Grand Vin Rosé 2022.
The wines are organic Coteaux d'Aix-en-Provence and IGP Méditerranée. The red varieties planted are Cabernet Sauvignon, Cinsault, Grenache Noir and Syrah; the whites are Clairette, Grenache Blanc, Vermentino, Sauvignon Blanc and Ugni Blanc. The range covers several rosés, reds and whites, a traditional-method sparkling and a non-alcoholic range.
Rosé is what the estate is best known for, and it is the everyday face of the place: pale, dry and made for drinking outdoors on a warm evening. If the architecture is what brought you to the name, the rosé is a very good way to get to know the wine.
Winery at Le Puy-Sainte-Réparade, Provence · Grenache, Cabernet Sauvignon and Syrah · £15.95 to £49.95 a bottle
