One name, three meanings, one place.
LaSuite aux Conseillans
Why our estate bears this name: “LaSuite” arranges the wines like the movements of a suite; “Aux Conseillans” names the place where they grow.
What is a suite?
A suite is a piece of music made up of several shorter pieces — the movements — played one after another; Johann Sebastian Bach wrote his from dances such as the Sarabande, Gigue and Allemande. Each movement has its own tempo and its own mood, and it takes a composer to bring them together into a single work. You do not listen for the best movement; you let one follow the other, and the whole is more than any single part.
We named our wines after these movements: each cuvée bears the name of the movement whose character it shares — distinct voices whose interplay turns on balance.
The Continuation of an Era
In French, “la suite” means the sequence, the continuation. That is exactly where our name comes from: we carry on at a place with a great legacy. For decades, the Domaine aux Conseillans was the estate of Jean Ribéreau-Gayon, one of the co-founders of modern oenology. Research was carried out here, and the history of wine was written here. LaSuite sees itself as the continuation of that work, by its own means.
The Next Step
LaSuite carries a third meaning as well: what comes next. In that sense, we keep writing the history of Bordeaux — more open, more accessible, more ecologically aware.
We call this stance New Bordeaux: the appellation read anew, without denying where it comes from.
And one sign above it all
Above each of our bottles stands the fermata — the musical sign for the sustained note. It is a reminder to give every wine the time it needs for its depth.
More on the fermata
The place in the name
While “LaSuite” stands for our stance, “Aux Conseillans” anchors the name in the landscape. It is a lieu-dit, a named place that has stood for viticulture for generations and already appears on old cadastral maps of the area. To read the name on the label is therefore also to read the soil on which the vines grow. How far back this history reaches, we tell in the chronicle of the Domaine.
“The name says who we are: a sequence of voices, in a place that has carried them for a long time.”Marc & Ellen Ruhland-Seidel