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Now Viewing: Domaine Tempier
The feeling of déjà vu crept over me as I pulled up the hire car in the shade of the plane trees that line the driveway up to the house at Domaine Tempier. Surely I had been here before? The place seemed so familiar, in particular the patio area to the left of the house, where luminaries such as Clive Coates are treated to long, lazy lunches by the Reynaud family, with delicious local fare washed down by fine, older vintages of their wine. But I knew it could not be; although I am by no means unfamiliar with their wines, this was my first visit to Domaine Tempier per se. To this very moment I have no firm explanation for that feeling, other that I must have seen images of the house and that patio in a merchant's wine list or wine book at some time. Whatever the explanation, it quickly passed; inside, the tasting room was wholly and reassuringly unfamiliar.
The Tempier family have owned vineyards in Bandol since 1834, although Domaine Tempier as we know it today was created only in 1940, upon the marriage of Lucie Tempier and Lucien Peyraud. Lucien Peyraud was instrumental not only in the birth of Domaine Tempier as we know it, but he was responsible, to a large extent, for the revival of Mourvèdre, at that time an almost forgotten variety, and for the creation of the Bandol appellation itself. All this enthusiasm followed his wedding, when Alphonse Tempier, Lucien's new father-in-law, presented him with an ancient bottle of their wine. It was a revelation; Lucien had found his purpose in life. He set about producing wines from the estate, which then had just 12 ha of Mourvèdre, and persuaded the Institut National des Appellations d’Origine (INAO) that this variety should be the linchpin about which the new appellation, created on November 11th 1941, would turn.
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