Domaine Tempier is a vineyard and an ancient dwelling, nestled in the hillsides outside the neighbouring fishing ports of Bandol and Sanary, some ten miles from Toulon and thirty miles from Marseilles. The oldest part of the house, in which, today, are installed the offices and tasting rooms, dates from before the French Revolution. The living quarters were built in 1834 by the Rounard family, whose daughter, Léonie, received the domaine as part of her dowry at the time of her marriage to François Tempier. Léonie and François Tempier were the great-grandparents of Madame Lucien Peyraud, born Lucie Tempier and known to Lucien, to five daughters, two sons, fourteen grandchildren, several great-grandchildren, and to adepts of wine and food the world round, as Lulu.

Domaine Tempier is also the Peyraud family, impassioned, exuberant, indefatigable, dedicated to the belief that the meaning of life lies in love and friendship and that these qualities are best expressed at table. Perhaps love and friendship can never be quite the same in the absence of the cicada's chant, of fresh sweet garlic and voluptuous olive oil, of summer-ripe tomatoes and the dense, spicy, wild fruit of the wines of Domaine Tempier, which reflect the scents of the Provençal hillsides and joyously embrace Lulu's high-spirited cuisine. For Lulu, cuisine is a language, the expression of love; for Lucien, wine is the expression of love. In Provence, cuisine and wine are as inseparable as Lulu and Lucien.

Lucien Peyraud and his twin, Louis, were born December 16, 1912, in Saint-Etienne. Their parents dealt in silks and ribbons. Neither twin wanted ribbons — Louis evolved toward industrial engineering; Lucien's passion was agriculture, which rapidly became centred on viticulture. After two years at the Ecole Superieure d'Agriculture in Aix-en-Provence, Lucien spent the early 1930s doing apprenticeships in vineyards and fruit orchards in the region around Aix and by a stint of obligatory military service. In 1935, in Sanary, where his parents rented a summer villa, Lucien encountered, on a diving board, a lovely seventeen- year-old wisp of a girl, Lucie Tempier. The effect was explosive.

Lucie Tempier was born December 11, 1917, in Marseilles. Her father, Alphonse Tempier, owned a leather-importing firm that had been in the family since before the Revolution, but his great love was painting and his idol was the Aixois painter, Cézanne. The Tempiers spent Sundays and summer holidays in Sanary, in the family villa, which Alphonse Tempier had built before the First World War, at the summit of the colline de Notre Damede-Pitié, next to the sixteenth-century chapel of the same name, with a sheer view of the port and a sweeping view of the surrounding mountains. Inspired by her father, whom she adored, Lulu was studying art at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Aix-en-Provence when she and Lucien met. They were married October 17, 1936, in the chapel of Notre Dame-de-Pitié. In the family album, beneath the photo of the radiant couple leaving the chapel, the date is inscribed in Lulu's hand, followed by a great exclamation point.

Lucien was out of work. He settled for a job with an irascible proprietor of fig and cherry orchards in Solliès-Pont, a village in the Gapeau valley, not far from Toulon. He recalls with distaste the large, black, tasteless figs, picked under-ripe to be shipped off to London and Paris ("Poor city-folk — nothing like wrinkled grey figs with pearls of honey escaping, picked ripe from the trees!"). The first child, Fleurine, was born March 1, 1938 (all the children were born in Marseilles, where Lulu spent a month after each delivery with her parents). Three years of fig culture were more than enough; at the beginning of 1939, Lucien agreed to momentarily abandon agriculture and to join his father-in-law in the leather-importing firm. Jean-Marie was born April 12. On September 3, France declared war on Germany and Lucien was mobilised.

July 10, 1940, marked the end of the Third Republic and the installation of the Vichy government. Lucien was demobilised July 14. At the same time, Alphonse Tempier offered Lucien and Lulu the Domaine Tempier. François was born July 26, 1940.

Lulu's father had inherited the domaine from his grandmother, Léonie, at her death in 1917. The wine was sold in bulk, in Marseilles for the most part, until the depression of the 1930s, when everything began to collapse. Alphonse Tempier, whose occupations in Marseilles obliged him to farm out the domaine, had all but seven of the twenty-three acres of vineyard torn up and replanted to peach trees. The farmer, who preferred vines to fruit trees, moved to a neighbouring property. Like most rural properties at that time, there was no electricity, water was brought up from a well by a hand pump, and of course, there was no telephone. Lucien bought a cow to provide milk for the children and a horse to pull a plow and to transport peaches to the market. Food was scarce. Lulu says, "It seemed like the only thing there was plenty of was Jerusalem artichokes. Lucien used to bring home cartloads of them to feed the cow and he would say, 'Choose the best for the family, Lulu.' After the war, no one wanted ever again to taste a Jerusalem artichoke."

Despite deprivation and uncertainty about the future, excitement was in the air around Bandol when Lucien and Lulu settled in with the family at Domaine Tempier. AndréRoethlisberger was the Swiss proprietor of Château Milhière, near Sanary. His wines, at that time, were the best in the region (the property has since disappeared, victim of shabby housing developments). He had studied the history of Bandol wine and was determined to raise the overall quality to that of the past. His goal was for Bandol to be recognised as an "Appellation d'Origine Contrôlée" (AOC) by the Institute National des Appellations d'Origine (INAO), an official organisation created in 1935 that imposes complex, quality-related strictures on all French wines or brandies granted AOC status. In 1939, André Roethlisberger had created, with the few other proprietors who believed — or wanted to believe — in his dream, a syndicate for the improvement and promotion of Bandol wine (it was usually referred to as the Syndicat des Anciens Vins de Bandol because its official name, Le Syndicat des Producteurs des Vins Fins de la Région Historique des Vins de Bandol, was too much of a mouthful to pronounce). This was wonderful bait for Lucien. He bit hard and never since loosened his grip; he became Andre Roethlisberger's confidant, colleague, and successor.

THE WINE OF BANDOL

Today, as in centuries past, the wines called "Bandol" come mostly from a cluster of communities surrounding Bandol, the port from which they were once shipped. Bandol also occupies centre stage in the natural amphitheatre that describes the Bandol microclimate — a basin of terraced...