Wine from Clos Solene

Born and raised in the Southeast of France, Guillaume comes from a family of grape growers and winemakers. After 24 years in Narbonne, he moved to Bordeaux. Both regions famous for their wines are also very different from each other. It requires some grape growing and winemaking experience to switch from one to the other, such as different climates, soil types, vine illnesses and more. But life is full of surprises. Not convinced he wanted to make wine in Bordeaux, he took a harvest internship at L’Aventure in Paso Robles. The same bolt of lighting that he felt for Solène, struck again. He fell in love with the soil and terroir of Paso Robles. What was supposed to be a 3-month harvest internship, turned into 6 months, and he was offered the position of Assistant Winemaker. While working for L’Aventure, he worked day and night on his own project - to launch his very own brand. In 2007, Clos Solène was born.

When Guillaume and Solène acquired the estate in January of 2017, the existing vineyard was planted in 1998 onto vigorous rootstock. The rows were planted a little wider than Guillaume would have planted, but he felt that it was a great place to start, especially having 20-year-old vines in place, which is considered “old vines” for this area. After testing to make sure the vines were clean of any and all viruses, Guillaume decided to re-graft the whole 8 acres and turn the plot into a nursery for future planting.

Robert Parker on Clos Solene:

"Clos Solène was founded in 2007 by Guillaume and Solène Fabre. At present, they make about 2,500 cases a year but have recently purchased their own estate and hope to grow the brand to around 4,000 cases. Guillaume, a native of the Languedoc-Roussillon in France, has begun planting rootstocks and grafting over vines and is experimenting with Côte-Rôtie-style training for his Syrah vines. Currently, most of the fruit is purchased, but the pair hopes to dial back to only 30% purchased fruit as their own vines come online. Guillaume says he wants his wines to have “a common denominator of elegance and perfume,” and indeed the wines are much more restrained than is usual for Paso. 2017 with its heat spikes was especially challenging here. “It was 105 degrees for two straight weeks,” Guillaume recalls. “We picked a bit earlier, used less new oak, less stems and less extraction. We did triage picks and then sorted very heavily. We lost about 30% to 40% of production on the sorting table because we let go of anything impacted by that heat. - Erin BROOKS"

- Robert Parker's Wine Advocate (February 2020)