Dovecote

Dovecote wines come to us from two longtime friends, Steve Lawrence and Laurent Barbier. You might know of Steve as the man who built Veuve Clicquot in the US market in the 1990’s – Steve now lives in Southern Bordeaux where he and his wife own and operate Château La Corne. Laurent is a man who has done just about everything in the wine world, from farming, to winemaking, to running sales operations for the likes of the Lurton Brothers and Chalone.

Dovecote wines come from the region of Gascony, which lies in the “Piedmont Plain” of the Pyrenees, an area with a unique soil called “boulbéne” which is a mix of red clay and sand that sits above limestone bedrock. The more limestone you have in the boulbéne, the warmer the soil, and the less limestone present, the cooler the soil. Steve and Laurent produce Dovecote from two separate vineyard sites, one warm and one cool, so that we end up with a mix of both fruity and savory qualities in the finished wines. Let’s not geek out too much though…the Dovecote project is all about instant pleasure! These are wines that showcase Gascony’s unique terroir with a smile.

Still reading? Good. Maybe you are you wondering what these buildings are that we call “dovecotes…” Dovecotes can be found all over southwest France and date back to the Middle Ages – These buildings (also called pigeonnier or colombiers) housed a family’s pigeons, which were essential for three things – Food (deliciousness), communication (no iPhones in the Middle Ages!), and fertilizer (poop). Only the aristocracy was allowed to have them. Today you’ll find numerous architectural styles of dovecotes – They can be round, square, standalone, part of a larger building, wooden, brick, or sandstone. Most of this simply depended on the wealth of the family building them. Steve and Laurent love these things and consider dovecotes a beautiful and true expression of rural southwest France.