Quality before speed.
The Fermata
A sign borrowed from musical notation, and it stands on every one of our bottles. It has to do with time held — and with who decides how long.
What is a fermata?
In musical notation, a fermata directs the performer to hold a note or a rest longer than its written value. The steady pulse is suspended for that moment. How long it lasts is usually not written down: that is decided by whoever plays it.
In performance it is the moment when a musician listens after the sound and lets it ring out before moving on. A conductor may dwell on the passage or move on after an instant — and the passage sounds different each time.
This is what a fermata looks like.
A fermata is a semicircle with a dot beneath it, placed above a note or above a rest.
Room for Depth.
For us, held time means something concrete: investing time — in maturity, in careful decisions, in quiet cellar work. The Sarabande 2015 was picked in the autumn of 2015 and released in 2025: ten years in the cellar, eighteen months of them in barrel. When a bottle leaves the estate is set by no calendar — we decide that, vintage by vintage, and we carry the risk of those years. Whoever opens it should give it the first half hour.
How we work in detail is described in our text on the meaning of precision. And when a Bordeaux is at its best to open is covered under when to drink Bordeaux.
A house that thinks in movements.
The fermata suits us because LaSuite aux Conseillans is itself built like a suite: every wine in the suite carries the name of a musical movement, and only together do they make the whole — what the suite means has a page of its own. Music plays here daily in the vineyard and in the chai, and Ellen Ruhland, who co-runs the estate, is a concert pianist.
That is how the sign for a held note became our own sign: today it stands on every one of our bottles.
Read on.
What the fermata means for style, maturity and pleasure — across nine short pages.
“We pause so that what follows can carry.”Our Attitude