And how Jean-Marie Peyraud, following his father Lucien's lead, aged the Bandol strictly in large, well used casks (rather than new, small oak barrels) so that the wine tasted of grapes and earth rather than freshly hewn trees, and bottled with absolutely no sulfites so that years after, when drinking Domaine Tempier Bandol, you would still feel like you were drinking directly from the cask, when the wine still tastes like it is just squeezed from the grapes.

Indeed, Domaine Tempier's Bandol is a wine that really doesn't age. That is to say, it will retain its deep color and fragrance – in fact, deepen in color and fragrance – even as the years fly by. I kid you not, as this very fact was driven home to me one night (oh, about eleven years ago) when Kermit himself served me a muscular 20 year old Vieux Télégraphe Châteauneuf-du-Pape, followed by a regally scented 20 year old Chave Hermitage, followed by a 20 year old Domaine Tempier… all double-blind (the identities of the wines hidden from me in decanters), and densest, darkest, most fragrant wine of the three was still, after all that time, the Bandol! But I wasn’t surprised, because I'd already been entangled with Bandol for some time. Now are you getting interested?

Okay, then you must first find yourself a bottle of the 2006 Domaine Tempier Bandol Classique (about $40); which, although is an entry level Bandol (Tempier produces several single vineyard Bandols with even more pent-up energy and power), has all the Bandolishness you need: a nose of sweet berries (sometimes I think cassis, other times framboise) floating over the glass with wispy, invisible clouds of earth (freshly composted humus… perfume to a gardener) and gunflint mixed with a subtle ocean salinity; and on the palate, juicy, rich, medium to full flavors, tugging at the senses like that old, familiar, perfectly agreeable pain (ah, that girl from the fields).

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