At the entrance to the estate it says «Trois Filles», and in the logo the dot on the i turns into a flower. The same mark sits on the door frame. The house behind it is painted pink and stands out of the green like a marshmallow on a lawn.
You could read that as decoration. It is a statement of intent.
Three daughters, one suggestion
Les Lauves is a hamlet of La Cadière-d'Azur, named after the big limestone slabs that push up out of the landscape there. Among old olive trees and broom bushes, Monsieur and Madame Arlon grew vines for years, on nine hectares inside the Bandol appellation. The crop went to the co-operative. That was the arrangement, year after year.
Their three daughters grew up to the rhythm of the harvest. Audrey, the eldest, studied agriculture, spent three years in Chile and in Bordeaux, and became cellar master at an estate in Bandol. She was the one who suggested to her parents that they make the wine themselves instead of handing over the grapes.
In 2013 the estate was painted pink and christened «Trois Filles». Léonie joined a year later, having specialised in food. Justine, the youngest, was still studying at the time.
The estate in Les Lauves. You will find it without a satnav.
What they do differently
The vineyard sits on a slope looking out over the Mediterranean. The berries watch the sailing boats in the bay of Les Lecques while they ripen, and the site shelters them so well that neither fog nor frost nor the mistral can touch them.
Picking happens early in the morning so the berries never get a temperature shock, by hand and into small crates. After that they do not travel far: the Arlons built their cellar into the slope, straight into the rock of their own vineyard. The grapes follow gravity and drop into the press with nobody pumping them. The cellar holds a steady 14 to 16 degrees without any cooling equipment.
And because the house is pink, so are the surfaces down there. Lacquered plum-red and pink. Anyone who still thought the colour was an accident knows better by then.
Audrey in the cellar. The part of the job no label ever shows.
Two rosés, two jobs
The sisters bottle two rosés, and what separates them is not a difference in quality. It is a grape.
The Côtes de Provence is 60 per cent Grenache, with Cinsault, Carignan and 5 per cent Mourvèdre. It is the lighter of the two, made for the moment the bottle opens and everyone is sitting outside. When we put together our first Millésime magazine in 2019, this was our wine of the month for May, with the suggestion that you read the issue over a glass of it.
The Bandol rosé turns the ratio around: 60 per cent Mourvèdre, with 25 per cent Grenache and 15 per cent Cinsault.
Mourvèdre ripens slowly and needs heat well into autumn, which is why in most places it never quite gets there. In Bandol it does. As a red grape it brings tannin and structure, and in a rosé you notice that somewhere you would not expect: not at the start, but at the end. The wine does not stop after two seconds.
So one wine has the apéritif and the other has dinner. Both from the same cellar, the same hands, picked in the same year.
Two of the three sisters. The tractor is older than the estate.
How the Bandol tastes
Very pale in the glass, almost see-through with a hint of salmon. On the nose peach, citrus and something tropical that points towards mango.
On the palate the fruit comes first, then a saltiness that does not announce itself, it is simply there. And at the end, that length. That is the Mourvèdre.
Audrey recommends it with scallop risotto. That gets it right: the wine can handle a dish with substance without running it over. Grilled fish with herbs, chicken off the barbecue and goat's cheese work the same way.
One tip, because with this wine it genuinely changes things: do not drink it too cold. At six degrees the chill sits on top of everything that makes it interesting. At ten to twelve it opens up. Out of the fridge half an hour before dinner, not out of the ice bucket.
If you want to go deeper
Alongside Trois Filles we list two more Bandol estates. La Suffrène goes broader and rounder with 45 per cent Mourvèdre, and Cédric Gravier took the estate over in 1996 at the age of 23. Gros'Noré is the strictest of the three at 54 per cent Mourvèdre, and Alain Pascal built the estate with his own hands after his father died. Our Bernhard has been sitting at his table regularly for more than twenty years.
All three are in Summer & Rosé, and if you want to see where the people behind the bottles work, they are all on the winemaker overview. What steep sites do to a wine is something we took apart in the Ribeira Sacra.
Still, you learn most by putting the sisters' two rosés side by side. Same cellar, same year, two different jobs. After that you will pick out Mourvèdre even when nobody tells you it is in there.
