_Domaines Ott: Three vineyards in Provence and the pioneering family behind the modern rosé

It is a warm, bright Autumn day on the pine-fringed Plage du Pellegrin on Southern France’s Var coast, a wild, golden stretch of sand that faces the hazy silhouette of the nearby Porquerolles islands.

Few stumble across this peaceful, unkempt beach less than an hour’s drive west of St Tropez. Fewer still know that behind an unassuming gate directly on the sand sits a vineyard whose owners can claim to be the inventors of rosé wine.

The Ancient Greeks may have first discovered the possibility of creating pink wine from fermented juice – a drink of dubious quality that was mostly for the winemaker’s drunken delectation. But it was Marcel Ott, founder of Domaines Ott – the owners of this spectacularly-located seafront vineyard, called Clos Mireille – who is considered to be the pioneer behind modern rosé.

Today, sales of rosé wine are booming as millennial palates embrace its versatility and its reputation shifts from lightweight, easy-drinking to a serious wine with price tags to match.

And it’s in large part thanks to Marcel Ott, an agricultural engineer from Alsace, who just over a century ago bought the first of the family’s Provençal estates, Château de Selle in Taradeau, an hour’s drive inland from Clos Mireille.

He then acquired Clos Mireille two decades later in 1936 and Château Romassan, just along the coast near Bandol, 20 years after that. The estates produce all three colours of wine, but it’s for their rosés that they have sealed their reputation, with the Château de Selle rosé often voted one of the best in the world.

There is still a certain amount of education needed when it comes to rosé wine, however, as Jean-François Ott, Marcel’s great-grandson, well knows.

He has run the business with his cousin Christian since 2009 and says, first of all, he wants to ensure that anyone who orders a bottle of Domaines Ott wine is never disappointed. “Then,” he says, “you learn there are three estates and they are all different.”

Cue a tasting, starting with Clos Mireille. “That’s the vineyard nearest the sea. You taste the fresh, fruity, light flavours of young vines,” he says. Next up is Château de Selle. “That was the original one. It’s subtle, bigger. It’s the rosé that goes with food.”

And then comes the surprise. Château Romassan, darker in tone due to its Mourvèdre grapes. “It needs oxygen, so you should open it at least two hours before you drink it. And you should now drink the 2015 vintage,” Jean-François announces.

It will come as news to the vast majority of rosé drinkers who think it’s a drink best consumed young and immediately upon removing from the fridge.

“We need to teach people about letting rosé mature a bit,” says Jean-François, who is waiting to sell his 2017 vintage. “It needs the colder winter months to get clarification. It makes the difference between a regular and a high quality rosé. If a rosé is still good after a year, that means the balance was good.”

If drinking rosé is still a learning process, the challenges are nothing compared to when Marcel Ott started out ago. With much of France’s vines wiped out by phylloxera in the 1880s, land was cheap but barren and Ott had to plant everything from scratch.

“That was a good thing, in fact. It was a new type of grape and it saw the beginning of a new kind of Côtes de Provence, which was to become an AOC in 1977,” says Jean-François.

The magnificent new winery made from honey-coloured, starkly linear limestone blocks glows against the piercing blue Provençal sky

There was the tricky terrain to contend with too – the stony clay at Château de Selle and the salty soil and coastal humidity at Clos Mireille. “Everything is a matter of balance in this job. Wherever you get a tough terroir, the taste is very special,” says Jean-François. “It’s rare to have a vineyard on the coast, but the saltiness works well for rosé and white wine – and it makes you want to drink more.”

Marcel also had to struggle with the image of this new-fangled rosé wine. “At the beginning, he sold it in restaurants in small barrels.

People didn’t want to admit they they liked it, but he could see from the little that was left that it was the most popular wine. He saw the potential to make a gastronomic wine,” says Jean-François.

Marcel broke other boundaries too. He designed a distinctively slender, curvacious bottle that still marks out Ott wines from any other. And in the late 1930s, he began exporting his wine to the US – which remains a major market for Domaines Ott, who until 20 years ago produced a quarter of rosé sold in New York. “They have learnt about rosé in New York through Domaines Ott. It’s the standard there,” says Jean-François.

He clearly shares his great-grandfather’s all-consuming passion for producing wine. He joined the family business aged 28 in 2002 and intended to stay for one year.

“It was a bad vintage as there had been a lot of rain and we produced 40% less than the previous year. I thought I’d be fired after the harvest,” he says.

But he brought a new energy to the business, which complemented his parents’ decades of experience. “To have 40 years’ experience in this business is invaluable.

The life of vines is from 40 to 60 years. Last year, I pulled out the last vines my grandfather planted at Château de Selle and we’re now planting vines that should last 80 years – far longer than we will,” he says.

Behind an unassuming gate directly on the sand sits Clos Mireille whose owners can claim to be the inventors of rosé wine

It was also his parents who, in 2004, joined forces with Louis Roederer, the leading champagne producer who distribute Domaines Ott wines.

“We are both wine-making family businesses, which makes a difference. We’re very strong in Provence. They are well known with Cristal in the US. We sell in 60 countries. They sell in 120.

It’s a good marriage as it means we can focus on the wine-making. It’s hard to find time to be a producer and a distributor,” says Jean-François.

Something else he finds little time for is social media – although he knows how powerful it can be to post a picture of one of his bottles next to a beautiful swimming pool.

Modern architecture is most certainly on his radar, however, as seen at Domaines Ott’s new €10m winery at Château de Selle. Among a landscape of gentle hills and pine forests, where the main landmark is the 12th century Taradel watch tower, this magnificent new building made from honey-coloured, starkly linear limestone blocks glows against the piercing blue Provençal sky.

Designed by the Paris-based architect Carl Fredrik Svendstedt, much of the three-storey, 45,000 sq ft building – which provides four times the wine-making capacity of the one it replaced – is underground.

From here, they produce 360,000 bottles of rosé a year and 10,000 bottles of red. Its accompanying Château is near derelict these days, but Jean-François plans to breathe new life into it along the same lines as Clos Mireille.

This striking new winery makes a bold statement about Domaines Ott’s ambitions – and though Jean-François would rather focus on other things, its Instagram is undeniable.

But this century-old business is about far more than image. “I love the fact that St Tropez, Monaco and Ibiza are fans of our wines,” says Jean-François, “but I don’t want our image to be limited to that. We want a balance.”

Just as in the world-class rosés he produces. And where better to find that balance that in this rare gem of a vineyard, which thrives just metres away from the gently lapping Mediterranean waves appeal.

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