Appellation: St Joseph.
Cuvée: Les Baraques.
Colour: Red.
Grapes: Syrah.
About: There’s a production of just 1,500 bottles of this wine and you can feel the love and hand-craft in each bottle. It comes from one of the best sites in the Appellation, a tiny slice of steep hillside near Ste Epine. It’s marked by perfume, purity, elegance and delicacy, what Northern Rhone Syrah always used to be but which has been mostly lost in the world of modern, commercial wine-making.
Vines
Location: It comes from one of the best sites in the Appellation, a tiny slice of very steep terraced hillside near Ste Epine, surrounded by forest.
Size ha: 1.
Age: vines planted around 1960.
Soils: decomposed granite.
Exposition: south-east.
Altitude: 150m.
Training: classically in gobelet on echalas.
Farming: very carefully farmed organically.
Average yield hl/ha: 35.
Climate: .
Winemaking
The harvest is picked by hand into small crates and carefully sorted upon entry to the cellar, where it’s put in a cold room until Thierry has the time to process it, depending on the demands of the ripening fruit in the field. Lightly crushed, it’s fermented whole bunch by natural yeasts with a maceration of 15 days and a daily gentle 10 minute remontage. Then it’s pressed in an old basket press and moved to age in old barriques for 12 months. It’s bottled unfined and unfiltered with a light touch of sulfites.
Vintage Notes 2016
Yield hl/ha: 35.
Harvested: .
Bottles produced: 1,500.
Date bottled: 2017-11.
Alcohol %: 12.46.
SO2 Total: <20.
Tasting: wonderfully earthy and peppery, very old school and complex, quite dense but very refreshing.
Vintage Notes 2017
Yield hl/ha: 35.
Harvested: .
Bottles produced: 1,300.
Date bottled: 2018-09.
Alcohol %: 12.5.
SO2 Total: <20.
Tasting: violets, cassis, smoke, mineral burst from the young wine and lead to a fabulous mouthful of crisp, gently astringent pure black fruit, berry, and cherry.