"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)
"Guillaume Fabre’s 2017s show the lush, forward character of the vintage to full effect, which will come as no surprise to readers familiar with his winemaking style, which favors richness and flavor intensity but not at the expense of elegance. It’s a special vintage for Guillaume and his wife, Solène, as it marks their first harvest at their own property in the Willow Creek district, in the vineyard and at the winery that formerly housed Pipestem Cellars. It comprises of 28 acres of rolling, often steep hills that Guillaume is painstakingly replanting to less vigorous rootstock, which he says will bring even greater depth as well as energy to his wines, which are already among the most powerful from the west side of Paso Robles. - Josh Raynolds"