Château de Beaucastel’s new £15mn ‘wine chapel’
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Winemakers for five generations, the Perrin family owns Château de Beaucastel, the southern Rhône estate often dubbed (to their slight annoyance) “the Pétrus of the south”. “It is one of the greatest estates of Châteauneuf-du‑Pape,” says Wines of the Rhône author Matt Walls. “In many ways it’s a yardstick by which others can be measured. It creates wines of gothic splendour, cathedrals in a bottle.” The Perrin name is also touched with glamour: since 2012, the family has had a 50 per cent stake in Brad Pitt’s Provençal rosé brand Miraval.
So when the Perrins announced in 2018 that they were razing their famous Beaucastel estate to the ground, and commissioning a five-star team – including architects Studio Mumbai and Studio Méditeranée and garden designer Tom Stuart-Smith – to re-envision it, it piqued the wine world’s interest. Seven years on, the radical new design is finally open for business.
I arrive expecting something grand – maybe even a bit flash – so I’m taken aback by the new €15mn winery’s outward understatement. It hunkers down among the rows of sunbaked vines, not unlike a Moorish fort. It’s only once I cross the threshold that this place’s distinct, even slightly spiritual, atmosphere starts to take hold.
Built almost entirely from scratch, using sand, clay and pebbles reclaimed from the site, it sets out to capture what Studio Mumbai’s Bijoy Jain refers to as genius loci or “spirit of place” – channelling the terroir from the paint pigments and planting through to the way it harnesses water, wind and sun. “We are quite conservative in the field and the cellar, but we innovate with the architecture and the way we manage our resources,” says 45-year-old Charles Perrin. “And in that way we try to continue the family tradition of pushing the boundaries.”
The only part of the original property that remains is the 16th-century farmhouse at its heart – and it’s here that I’m greeted by Perrin and Studio Méditerranée architect Louis-Antoine Grégo (who also worked with Stuart-Smith on the Hôtel du Couvent in Nice). “This was our family home until 2015 – as a child, that was my swimming pool,” says Perrin, gesturing to a weathered-stone pond full of water lilies that now stands in the midst of a gravel courtyard planted with nodding blue irises, acid-green euphorbia and sage.
Outside, it is searingly bright and windy – the Rhône’s famous mistral winds can reach 130kmph – but inside the refurbished farmhouse, all is soft and still. The light is diffused by walls plastered with a tactile mix of hemp, lime and earth and a gentle colour palette. Sections of the walls are studded with the same large, smooth “galet” pebbles that litter the surrounding vineyards. The feel is monastic; it has the introspection of a cave. “We didn’t want the interiors to distract people,” says Perrin. “We want them to focus on the wine.” Also newly installed are two tasting rooms and a restaurant-grade kitchen, which will host dinners for up to 12.
Visits to Beaucastel remain strictly by appointment – reserved for trade and dedicated Beaucastel collectors. But this new emphasis on high-spec entertaining reflects the growing importance of client face-time in fine wine sales. There’s also the fact that there are now nine family members on the board, so keeping Beaucastel as the family seat “just wasn’t practical”, says Perrin (who now lives in Orange, around 6km away). Instead, the family built a four-bedroom cottage for personal use, enclosed by a sweet walled garden with a pool that Stuart-Smith has surrounded with soft grasses, silvery lamb’s ears and carpets of scented thyme.
On some sides of the winery, the vines come right up to the rammed-earth walls – but to the south Stuart-Smith has inserted a winding gravel path flanked by beds of poppies, irises and grasses that merge into the vineyards. “The planting is intentionally very simple,” he says. “We wanted to keep it very reflective of where it is. So there’s quite a preponderance of native planting – things that thrive in harsh Mediterranean conditions.”
“Every courtyard features water in some way,” adds Grégo of the details. “It is a leitmotif of the design. Because it’s such a precious resource; it takes five to 10 litres to make one litre of wine.” The most important water feature of all is Beaucastel’s new 1,800cu m underground rainwater reservoir – critical in a region where rainfall is in decline. Other eco-friendly additions include a cellar cooled by mistral winds and solar power. The new winery is bigger and more efficient, ensuring that all 56 vineyard plots can be picked and vinified at their peak.
The Perrins were early adopters of organic viticulture, and have been fully biodynamic since 1974. “It’s a form of viticulture that requires you to pay much closer attention to the vines, to be more present in the vineyard,” says Perrin. “But it’s also a way of life.”
Château de Beaucastel Roussanne Vieilles Vignes, £172, bbr.com
Château de Beaucastel Hommage à Jacques Perrin, £432, millesima.co.uk
Standing among the large oak foudres in the winery, we taste vintages stretching back to 1995. The Château’s flagship red, Château de Beaucastel, is a complex blend that leads on mourvèdre and grenache grapes. “It is a wine that’s powerful – even a bit rough and direct – and elegant at the same time,” says Perrin. “It’s at its best after 10 to 20 years.”
The 2022 is all red and black berries. The cooler 2018 is silky, with a hint of aromatic pepper. By 2012 “the mourvèdre is emerging,” says Perrin. “I love this vintage.” Notes of truffle and smoke have joined the fruit. Finally, we arrive at 1995. Exclaims Perrin: “Now it’s on the rails!”
Beaucastel’s flagship wine, Château de Beaucastel Hommage à Jacques Perrin, pays tribute to the late family member who initiated its switch to organic/biodynamic, laying the ground for wines that would one day put the Rhône upon the fine wine map. Made primarily with mourvèdre from Beaucastel’s 116-year-old Courrieux vineyard, and produced only in the best vintages, this wine has a structure and concentration that makes it extraordinarily long-lived.
A special space in the cellars has been reserved for back vintages of the Hommage wines – “we call it ‘the chapel’”, says Perrin gesturing to the vaulted ceiling with a grin. He and Grégo then lead me down a spiral staircase to a clay-floored cell just a few feet square, where a small limestone table stands, awaiting tastings, by the light of an alabaster lamp. The air is heavy with the loamy smell of damp earth.
“Wherever you are in Beaucastel, you are never far from the landscape,” says Grégo, running his hand over an unplastered wall, where several million years of sand, pebbles and silt are layered up like a millefeuille. “To me, beauty comes from very simple things like this.” We toast with Beaucastel Hommage à Jacques Perrin 2010, a wine that, despite its relative youth, is already exhibiting a wonderful patina of aromas and flavours – redcurrant, prune, leather, black olive, dried herbs and liquorice. Like the new Beaucastel, this is one that’s built to last.
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