Perhaps you have already experienced this. You are looking for a specific wine that you enjoyed last year, and you can't find it. No new vintage, no indication, just a gap where it used to be. The first thought is often: sold out. Sometimes that's true. But sometimes the wine simply isn't available this year - because it wasn't made.
That sounds unusual at first, almost paradoxical in a time when the wine world is more familiar with the opposite problem. In large parts of Bordeaux, there is currently talk of too much wine, of areas being idled, of quantities that cannot find buyers. Against this background, the decision not to bottle a wine deliberately might seem strange. For us, it is one of the calmest and clearest decisions of all.
What it means not to make a wine
For us, a wine with its own name is not a calendar entry that repeats itself every year. It is a threshold. A cuvée like the Allemande only comes into being in the years when the Cabernets can support it - if they don't, it is not bottled. The Caprice, our smallest cuvée, was not produced in the 2024 vintage; what we wanted in the glass wasn't there, so it doesn't exist from that year.
This decision is not made at the end, in the cellar, but extends throughout the year. It concerns grapes that have already required work, and it means foregoing a wine and its revenue that the market would have expected. What disappears is only the claim to release something under a specific name that does not deserve that name this year.
Nothing is wasted in the process, because the fruit finds another way. A parcel whose berries taste different this year than last year will simply go into a different blend that suits it better. A single barrel can be great and yet not fit into any line - for example, because it would pull a wine too strongly towards a single grape variety. For precisely such barrels and batches that are convincing but do not fit into any cuvée, we have two of our own wines: Le Ton Rouge and Le Ton Blanc. The name says what it's about - not a movement of the suite, but the tone of the house. And if a year simply leaves a parcel too weak, it is sold as bulk wine. Good wine is not lost to us. What we protect is not the quantity, but the name.
The idea behind this comes less from Bordeaux than from Burgundy. There, each parcel, each site is allowed to develop its own expression, and some voices can only be heard in certain years. We read our five hectares in this sense: parcel by parcel, new year by year, without the assumption that every voice must always sing. Diversity thus arises not from quantity, but from attention. And attention includes the possibility that a certain cuvée might be better left unsaid in a particular year.
Selection is not scarcity
It is important to distinguish this from artificial scarcity. We do not withhold wine to create desire, and we do not play with the fear of missing out. The difference is simple: with artificial scarcity, the wine exists, it's just harder to get. With a selection, it doesn't exist at all this year because it wasn't produced. One is a sales technique, the other is a decision in the vineyard and in the cellar. The gap is therefore not a marketing gesture. It is the simple consequence of a standard: a movement of the suite only sounds when it is right. If it isn't, it remains silent this year - and that is not a defect, but part of the composition.
What the decision requires
A standard that comes before the name, not after it. The willingness to forgo quantity and revenue if a year does not justify them. And the composure to leave a gap open rather than fill it.
What this means for you
For you, this means above all: if a wine is available from us, it is not because the calendar demands it, but because the year has supported it. This removes a small uncertainty from the purchase. You don't have to weigh whether a weak vintage was passed off under a familiar label, because that question has already been decided by us. A missing cuvée is not an oversight and no indication of a bad estate - it is a bookmark. You can understand a cancelled vintage for what it is: a decision made in your favor before the bottle ever came into your hands. Those who understand selection as part of the work read a repertoire differently - not as a list that should always be complete, but as a sequence of years, each of which gives its own answer.
The Caprice 2023 is in the glass today because 2023 was a year that made it possible. 2024 was not. Both belong together. A wine that is sometimes absent is a wine you can trust.