Château Auguste

Château Auguste is the maison’s daylight estate. The line the house uses is exact: the wine for those who take their fun seriously. It is also, quietly, one of the more rigorous organic programs in the collection. Grapes are organically grown. Le’ Zilch, the dealcoholized rouge, is certified organic by ECOCERT France. Augustine Blanc, the Grand Rosé, and the Auguste Rouge all come off the same idea of fruit — no colors, no flavorings, no bulk wine dressed up later.

At dawn and at dusk the vines are played music. The process is called Genodics. The claim, stated by the maison and repeated because it is specific, is that the fruit grows plumper and more resistant to fungus. The Grand Rosé is hand-picked with stems attached so the berries do not oxidize on the way to the press. Limestone plots are chosen for complexity. The team is the same Bordeaux bench the house trusts with its scored reds.

The 2016 Auguste Rouge took 90 points from James Suckling. The current U.S. rouge on the shop is the 2018: eighty percent Merlot, ten Cabernet Sauvignon, ten Cabernet Franc — blackberry, blueberry, dark plum, black cherry, licorice, cedar, soft tannins, a finish that stays. Augustine Blanc, the 2023, is Sauvignon Blanc and Sémillon with five percent Muscadelle. Pear, white peach, fresh almond, grassy, long. The Grand Rosé drew Tom Mullen at Forbes: roses, lime, lemon, a little nuttiness, tannin and acidity in the same sentence, “Provençal linearity” from Bordeaux, which is harder to do than the color suggests.

There is also Le’ Zilch, a dealcoholized rouge that keeps the clay-limestone argument and drops the alcohol. Serve it at 65°F. The maison built it to echo the 90-point Auguste Rouge. It is not a soda. It is the same estate, edited.