We spent most of 2025 working out what we wanted to pour. Not as a sommelier would — we aren't sommeliers — but as two people who run a house where long lunches happen without warning and dinner routinely lasts five hours. The list below is what came out of that year of drinking carefully: the producers we'll be pouring at the estate through the 2026 season, organised roughly by how a good evening tends to unfold.
It isn't a wine list to impress. It reflects where we are — what the hills around us actually produce — and moves outward from there only when another region genuinely earns the place at the table.
I · The centreBergerac: not a list, a landscape.
Bergerac sits at the centre of the cellar. Not as a compromise — we're not pouring it because we live here — but because the hills around us produce wines that are direct, unforced, and deeply tied to the food we cook. They don't need translation. They belong here.
The evening usually opens with Château de la Jaubertie — their sparkling rosé has no ceremony to it, which is the whole point. From there, the whites: Château Les Verdots and L'Ancien Cure, both carrying citrus, orchard fruit, and just enough structure to hold a meal together without dominating it.
A few kilometres further, Tour des Gendres does something slightly different. Their wines feel less arranged. The Pét-Nat is cloudy, alive, a little unpredictable — the kind of bottle that doesn't settle the table, it wakes it up. We pour it when the guests look like they're going to be interesting.
The Atlantic line.
Move west and north, and the wines tighten. Muscadet from the Loire — granite, salt, restraint — appears on our table in three forms across the year. Not for variety's sake, but for contrast: one lean, one broader, one that opens slowly and rewards patience.
These aren't wines that try to be liked. They do something else. They make food sharper. They make conversation clearer. If we pour Muscadet at lunch, it usually means the afternoon is going to be productive.
Further south, Picpoul de Pinet does the opposite. It relaxes the room. Lemon, salt, and sunlight — a wine that works before anyone asks what it is. And Côtes de Gascogne is the quiet workhorse: light, aromatic, almost too easy, until you notice the bottle is empty first.
Jurançon, climbing south.
At some point, the wines start to climb. Jurançon sits at the edge of the Pyrenees, and you can feel it. The whites from Domaine Bellegarde, Clos Lapeyre, and Le Bois Sacré carry something different — tension, lift, a kind of vertical energy that you don't find in the lowland whites.
They smell ripe — pineapple, citrus oil, white flowers — but they don't behave that way. There's always a line running through them. Something holding them back. They're wines that change the pace of a meal; they ask you to slow down. Not dramatically. Just enough.
They don't need translation. They belong here.
Rosé arrives quietly.
We don't pour rosé because it's summer. We pour it because it works at a specific hour of the day, when the light has softened but the evening hasn't started. A glass from Maison Boutinot for the early afternoon. Something from Château Puech-Haut when the table fills and the food arrives.
And then Bandol. La Bastide Blanche doesn't behave like the others. Mourvèdre brings weight, spice, a quiet bitterness that lingers. It's still rosé, but it moves differently — closer to red, without losing the light. It changes what rosé is allowed to do.
If you've been told that rosé is a simple wine, drink La Bastide Blanche and then come back to the conversation.
Reds that don't compete.
The red wines don't try to dominate. Bergerac leads again — Château Corbiac, Château de la Jaubertie — wines that sit comfortably with food and don't ask for attention. Then Gaillac. Then Cahors. Darker, deeper, more grounded.
Further north, Loire reds bring the volume down again. Pineau d'Aunis, Grolleau — lighter, herbal, slightly unpredictable. Wines that feel closer to conversation than to structure.
And then, occasionally, a Bordeaux or a Burgundy. Not as centrepieces. As references. A reminder of what happens when the same ideas are pushed further — and, quietly, a reminder of what happens to the price.
Sweet, without ending.
Dessert wines sit at the edge of the table, and of the evening. Monbazillac and Saussignac — close, familiar, quietly complex. We pour them with blue cheese more often than with actual dessert; it's the better pairing, even if the book says otherwise.
And then, occasionally, Château Bélingard's Blanche de Bosredon, which stretches the category further than expected. Honey, citrus peel, spice. Sweet, but never heavy.
These wines don't end the evening. They extend it. Usually by about forty-five minutes, which is also roughly how long it takes the last guest to decide they probably should go to bed.
One thought about the region.
The Bergerac appellation is cheaper than it should be. This is partly because it sits in Bordeaux's shadow and has been playing second fiddle for three hundred years, and partly because the producers here still answer their own phones and don't spend on branding. The consequence, for anyone staying with us, is that you can drink seriously well for half what the equivalent bottle from forty minutes west would cost.
The region is also warming. Harvest dates are earlier than they were a generation ago; alcohol levels are creeping up; some producers are experimenting with different grape varieties, and a few — the more forward-looking ones — are starting to install shade infrastructure, including the solar panels we talk about on the ViviSolari page. Agrivoltaic vineyards have measured grape-yield increases of 20–60 percent under panels, because the partial shading protects the canopy from heat stress. Not theoretical. Already happening, in the Pyrénées-Orientales and elsewhere.
We expect, within ten years, to be pouring Bergerac wines made under agrivoltaic canopies, and a subset of them will be noticeably better than what the same producer makes now. Worth watching.
How to use this list.
Three practical notes for anyone staying with us this season.
The cellar is open to guests. Most of these bottles are available during your stay, at something close to our cost. Ask us — we'll tell you which producers we've just restocked.
We run tasting flights on request. Three to five wines, usually themed around one of the chapters above — Bergerac only, or the Atlantic line, or altitude, or rosé across three very different expressions. Easy to arrange; send an email a few days before you arrive.
We can point you to the producers. Most of the Bergerac names on this list are within forty minutes of the estate, and most of them welcome visits. Château de Monbazillac and Château de la Jaubertie both have tastings and restaurants on site. The smaller producers are more of an expedition, which is part of the point.
A printed version of the cellar list for the 2026 season is available on request. A recipe for suquet de peix — the Catalan fisherman's stew the estate is named after — is also available on request, and pairs unfairly well with an L'Ancien Cure white.