You don’t need to blend to shake things up a bit. While traditional Bordeaux chateaux mix together grapes from all over their vineyard, Le Dôme represents terroir in its truest sense, being a ‘single-vineyard’ wine. Le Dôme’s terroir has a single identity, and a real personality, that we do everything in our power to unearth. The result is a wine as rare in character as it is in quantity.
And with no land to spare, we plant the newest vines, grafted and raised from their forebearers, right amongst the oldest – preserving Le Dôme’s DNA from the previous generation and keeping its spirit alive for the next.
Despite its grapes being hand-picked and hand-sorted, Le Dôme is a wine that you’ll be lucky to get your hands on. With a limited release of roughly 2,500 cases each vintage and no set quantity, our only focus is quality – and with a HEV3 certification – a profound respect for our environment. In the same way all our energy is channelled into such a small area of vines, we carry out progressive manual de-leafing and ‘green harvesting’ not just once, but twice every year: removing excess grape buds so that the rich minerals of Le Dôme’s soils are packed into only 3-4 bunches per vine. Throughout the year, the vineyard team passes over 10 times through each row of vines making the micro-adjustments necessary to provide optimum growing conditions, whatever the vintage.
Now the grape variety that everyone is planting in Saint-Émilion, Le Dôme has been made with majority (~80%) Cabernet Franc long before it was cool, and remains the biggest expression of Cabernet Franc in Bordeaux. Referred to as ‘high-octane’ and ‘on steroids’, Le Dôme is so confident in its terroir that it opens it up to its freest and fullest extent - revealing a wine that is wild, opulent and fragrant as well as being rich, concentrated and lively. It’s a wine that drinks well after 3-4 years but stays alive for decades.
