The Art of Wine

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rovence does not want for charming, historic vineyards, and climbing the long driveway to Château La Coste, 20 minutes north of Aix, nothing amid the passing oak trees, olive groves and vine rows leads you to anticipate anything more. Then, just when you expect to reach a typical stately bastide, a great, curving metallic form seems to emerge out of the hills ahead – the estate’s winery, created in 2008 by architect Jean Nouvel. Then another glimmer catches the eye, as one arrives at a vast, V-shaped building in glass, steel and concrete surrounded by reflecting pools. There, seemingly hovering over the water, sits a huge metallic spider.

This is no scene out of HG Wells, as contemporary art lovers will quickly realise, but the 2003 bronze, Crouching Spider 6695, by Louise Bourgeois.

Circling the facility – the first building in France by Japanese architect Tadao Ando – other masterful works come into view on the water, including Alexander Calder’s colourful 1976 standing mobile Small Crinkly. A stone’s throw away, reaching towards the sky, looms architect Frank Gehry’s 2008 Music Pavilion, a dramatic, multi-dimensional structure of glass and wood planks. It’s clear something exceptional is happening at Château La Coste, a quiet piece of Provençal countryside where wine, art and architecture have come together on a unique scale.

Since the purchase in 2003, there has been significant investment and focus on the quality of the vines and the grapes on the 200ha estate. In 2006, one of France’s rising stars of winemaking, Matthieu Cosse, was invited to join the adventure. He set out to transform the estate through rigorous vineyard work, low yields and a conversion to organic viticulture. “There was an undeniable potential to create highly expressive wines,” says Cosse of the iron-rich clay and limestone soils. “Our goal is the

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ONLY DEGUSTATION

The art of wine

CULTURE AND VITICULTURE MEET AS RENOWNED ARTISTS AND VINTNERS THRIVE IN THE FRENCH COUNTRYSIDE

BY JEFFREY T IVERSON

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best possible expression of this terroir … pure, balanced wines with depth, complexity and finesse, which when you taste them, sing noble things.”

To taste the structured, silky reds, rich, refreshing whites, and uncommonly complex rosés by Cosse is to recognise the sincerity behind these lofty sentiments. “Wine as an object of culture is a concept that impassions me, and in a project like this, it’s what makes it all coherent,” he says. “Château La Coste is first and foremost a winemaking estate, but the vision was to create a project that was one of its kind, around l’art de vivre in the largest sense.”

Mara McKillen, who oversees the estate ,concurs. “I like to think the wine is our leader, it’s the first art on the property,” she says. “When the chai was

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built by Jean Nouvel, it was a logical thing to have a place where people could sit and enjoy a glass of the wine.” Thus the creation of the V-shaped art centre, with its café overlooking the works of Bourgeois, Calder and an elegant, tapered sculpture in stainless steel by Hiroshi Sugimoto.

By the public opening in 2011, contemporary art was appearing throughout the estate.

“The project has developed in a very organic sense,” says McKillen. Lunches at the vineyard with artist friends soon led to commissions for in-situ works, some of monumental proportions. “All the artists were invited to walk around the land, choose a place that spoke to them and create something that could live here.” Today, more than 20 new buildings and

installations “live” at Château La Coste, by artists such as Liam Gillick, Richard Serra and Paul Matisse, inspired perhaps by the same light Cézanne and Picasso so often celebrated about this part of Provence. But the total freedom they enjoy here must also be a draw: many works represent rare departures for these artists. Painter Sean Scully’s 2007 Wall of Light Cubed –made from 1,000 tons of limestone – is effectively a massive, 3-D version of his canvases. Frank Gehry – creator of Bilbao’s Guggenheim museum – was given the chance to collaborate on a forthcoming installation with Tony Berlant, one of the visual artists of the 1960s Los Angeles art scene that Gehry frequented and which he credits with the shaping of his architectural

vision. This is just one of many projects in development; others include such names as Renzo Piano and Ai Weiwei.

Art director Daniel Kennedy is loath to be too precise about when these – or the plans to create a luxury hotel – will come to fruition. The desire, it seems, is to preserve a spontaneous spirit.

“The idea came from friends having lunch in Provence and getting excited about the idea of creating something,” says Kennedy. “Things have developed over time without one master plan.” Perhaps, but it could be said that this vineyard-uniqueamong-vineyards has grown out of one simple conviction, written on the seal of every bottle of Château La Coste: Vinum Sculptura Est – wine is a sculpture. That it is. chateau-la-coste.com

PHOTO © GUGGI

A cast-iron fireplace, Babouin, 1973, by François-Xavier, top left; Claude’s bronze cast, made for the French embassy in New Lamenist quis accae enim qui quia exerum quis dolor re delles re sitionsedio

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This page, clockwise from top; Drop, 2009, by Tom Shannon; the Frank Gehry-designed Music Pavilion; Sean Scully’s Wall of Light Cubed, 2007 Facing page: Calix Mues Inebrians, 2009, by Guggi;

PHOTOS © CHÂTEAU LA COSTE AND TOM SHANNON, LEROUX/MADAME FIGARO/LAIF, © CHÂTEAU LA COSTE AND FRANK O. GEHRY

First spread: close up of Gehry’s wood and glass structure for the pavilion, left; Andy Goldsworthy’s Oak Room, 2009, right

Rosés by many other names The pick of Provence’s popular pink tipple

Interest for rosé wines has exploded in recent years and with its nine wine regions stretched across 200km of Mediterranean coastline, Provence produces perhaps the finest in the world –complex wines that can improve with cellaring and shine with gastronomy (while still evoking languorous summers at the sea).

Here, we look at four of the best: Château La Coste, Bellugue (chateau-la-coste.com) “No different than red or white,” says winemaker Matthieu Cosse, “rosé should be a real wine, expressive and with balance, complexity, density in the mouth, and a long finish.” That aptly describes Bellugue, a wine of considerable ripe white-fruit flavours, floral aromas, minerality and finesse.

Château Miraval (miraval-provence.com) From celebrated organic

wine growers Famille Perrin and Hollywood power couple Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, Miraval Rosé’s red-berry and tangerine flavours and spicy finish dazzled the blind tasting panel at Wine Spectator, which placed it among the Top 100 wines of 2013.

Château Pradeaux (chateau-pradeaux.com) The mourvèdre grape makes dark, rich reds, but also world-class rosés – like Château Pradeaux’s. Behind its pale, onion-skin colour is one of the world’s richest rosés, boasting elegance and power, wild strawberry, rose petal, garrigue aromas, and long ageing potential.

Domaine Tempier (domainetempier.com) The Tempier family is legendary in Provence’s Bandol region – as is their rosé. A bouquet of fruit, flower and spice, peach and citrus flavours, balance, harmony, length … suffice to say, critic Robert Parker is not alone in having named it the greatest rosé in the world.

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