Appellation: Corbières.
Cuvée: Le Rosé (in 2018 put into L’Année Rosé).
Colour: Pink.
Grapes: Mourvèdre, Grenache 5%.
About: This is an exceptional and unusual rosé due to its very limited production and use of basically 100% Mourvèdre, made in oak. It’s the antithesis of pale, watery Provence rosé and is really made for the table and has both weight and complexity.
Vines
Location: from 3 parcels between Peyriac-de-Mer and Bages.
Size: 2 ha.
Age: vines planted in 1980 .
Soils: heavy clay and limestone.
Exposition: gentle south-east slope.
Altitude : 15m.
Training: gobelet.
Farming: organic and biodynamic.
Average yield hl/ha: 15.
Climate: Mediterranean with some humidity from proximity of lagoon and sea.
Winemaking
The fruit is hand-harvested into small cases and rigorously selected. It was Basket pressed and cold settled, before being racked to ferment using natural yeasts in a mix of new and 3–4 year old French oak barriques with no added sulfites or other additives. It was aged for 6 months in the 3-4 year barriques with extended solids contact, then blended to stainless steel. No malolactic fermentation happened. No fining, it was bottled with a light, gross particle filtration
Vintage Notes 2017
Yield hl/ha: 15.
Harvested: September 7.
Bottles produced: 1,600.
Date bottled: 2018-04.
Alcohol %: 13.04.
SO2 Total: 55.
Tasting: The antithesis of pale Provence rosé, this demands food. Exciting aromas of toast, roast meats, strawberry and herbes de provence. Great energy.
Vintage Notes 2018
High mildew pressure in April and May was challenging but a northerly wind dried the vines and high temperatures in June, July and August brought the vintage to a nice conclusion.
Yield hl/ha: 25
Harvested: mid September
Bottles produced: 1,300
Date bottled: 2019-04
Vintage Notes 2019
Dry winter followed by early Spring rain, stable flowering, then marked by a run of heatwaves in the summer causing hydric stress, drought, then a big dump of rain in the middle of September meaning a vintage of two halves, that picked before the rain marked by drought, lack of ripeness, and that picked after more juicy, lower acid more ripeness.
Yield hl/ha: 20
Harvested: early september
Bottles produced: 600
Date bottled: 2020-04
Vintage Notes 2020
After the hydric stress of 2019, the beginning of the season was particularly wet, a real challenge, with huge mildew pressure, which didn’t really end until late July, not so warm either, then a very early harvest end of August. The most challenging year since 2003, to which the best vignerons rise, there was a huge selection of fruit in the vineyard and cellar, discarding sometimes up to 30% of the fruit, which takes time and therefore money, all to make fewer bottles. As if mildew wasn’t enough, wild pigs ran wild and ate grapes with abandon, in one vineyard everything. The hunters had been banned due to covid restrictions.
Yield hl/ha: 20
Harvested: mid september
Bottles produced: 1,000
Date bottled: 2021-04
Alcohol %:
SO2 Total:
Tasting: 2021-02-16, after the slightly mute 2019, 2020 Rosé is singing, with tons of fresh and evolved fruit, apple and blackberry and raspberry, fat with glycerine yet fresh and digestible, with seaside saltinesss.