The address is 1 Route du Bout du Monde, literally, the road to the end of the world, and that is not marketing. You drive out of Bormes-les-Mimosas through pines and greenery until the road runs out at the sea, and there is Château Malherbe: a beautiful old house, a lot of shade, and a tasting room that feels like someone’s home rather than a commercial cellar.
This is one of the oldest estates in the Le Lavandou area still in the hands of the same family, four generations of them now, and they came to wine from fishing, which explains a lot about why they wanted this particular piece of land. They wanted to be on the water. The estate sits on the grounds of the former farm of the Fort de Brégançon, which has been worked for something like two thousand years, and the fort itself is right there in your sightline, out on its rock, still the French president’s summer residence.
We toured the vineyards by golf cart, which is in fact the best way to do it, because the property runs from the top of a large hill all the way down to the sea and you cover ground you would never walk. The estate is split between two terroirs and the difference is the whole point. Up on the foothills of Cap Bénat the soil is clay and schist and the wines are broader and more structured. Down at Pointe du Diable the vines are on sand studded with quartz, right on the seafront, taking spray off the water, and the wines come out noticeably more saline. How saline depends on the year, on how much sea spray and how much rain. You can taste the sea in the glass, and standing in that parcel you understand exactly why.
There is something truly magical about the place, from the sparkle of the water to the intense smell of pine forest and sea. They respect this special land, having farmed without chemicals here since 1940 and are certified biodynamic now, with an orchard and vegetable garden planted in among the vines and their own olive oil in small quantities. This was one of my favorite afternoons of the trip and the kind of visit I would build a day around, with lunch in Le Lavandou afterward.
Note: Château Malherbe and The Var provided support for the reporting of this story.