Domaine Belle

The kaolin soil of Larnage, a rarity in Crozes-Hermitage, is one ingredient in the secret sauce that sets Domaine Belle apart in an appellation where consistent quality can be hard to find. “It gives an acidity, salinity, and a suave side for both whites and reds,” says Guillaume’s brother Valentin. “Wines from these soils hold up very well over time.” And there is indeed a galvanizing tension and stony minerality that distinguishes Belle’s kaolin cuvées—from the Marsanne-Roussanne blend of “Les Terres Blanches” to the “Louis Belle” Syrah. But there’s a lot more to the story—and to the work that the family has done to channel this terroir.

It starts after a village assembly in 1769, when Claude François Mure, the last lord to own the Larnage castle and vineyards, allocated a plot to each family for their own personal use. One parcel fell to the Belles, who over time acquired hillsides that their neighbors abandoned, bit by bit forming an estate that may well have the greatest soil diversity that exists today in the Crozes-Hermitage appellation. The soils run from rare and exceptional to classic and representative—from kaolin and fine limestone loess, to decomposed granite and galets roulets. And it couldn’t be more different from the valley floor that produces so much regrettably reductive Syrah under the Crozes-Hermitage banner. “There’s no such thing as ‘flat’ in Larnage,” says Valentin. “‘Flat’ does not exist here.” 

In 1933 Louis Belle, who loved growing grapes but didn’t much care for fermenting them, became a founding member of the Tain L’Hermitage wine-making cooperative. In the 1970s he passed four hectares down to his son Albert, who started making a little wine for himself and his friends. The definitive turn came in 1990, when Albert’s son Phillippe spearheaded the creation of a modern winery, burrowing an ample cellar into sloping ground.

More than 30 years later it remains very much a family affair, even as they’ve grown to 25 hectares extending into Hermitage and St. Joseph. While Phillippe remains a constant guiding presence—and his wife Magali labels the bottles—their sons Guillaume and Valentin have busied themselves bolstering the domaine’s ambitions. 

“The work is very physical,” Valentin says. “Everything is done by hand: pruning, tillage, phyto treatments, and harvesting.” But the quasi-medieval aspect of all that hand (and horse) power in the vineyards belies the modern sophistication of the Belles’ cellar. 

“We’ve always been over-equipped with refrigeration,” notes Valentin. So small-batch harvests can be chilled before vatting, and wild-yeast fermentation can run long and cool. But over the last 15 years they’ve raised their game to another level. It started in 2007 with the acquisition of stainless steel vats sized to particular vineyards, enabling plot-by-plot vinification. They meanwhile upgraded to a pneumatic press. 2017 brought new, unlined concrete tanks to go along with a range of oak barrels (up to 50 percent new for the flagship whole-cluster Hermitage, and between one and five years old for the destemmed Crozes-Hermitage cuveés). A vertical press dedicated for reds arrived in 2022, completing a shift to gravity-fed vinification with no pumping. And since then they’ve added four 13.5-hectoliter concrete eggs whose elongated shape gives the whites maximum contact with the lees.

The results speak for themselves: whites that combine Northern Rhone tropicality with a delicacy suggestive of Sancerre (where white soils also abound), and pristinely crafted Syrah cuvées whose ultraviolet near-opacity vibrates with a refreshing elegance. Having grown fruit for generations, the Belle family is now expressing it with a level of purity as rare as the kaolin clay that lines their boot treads and fingernails.