2007 Vin de Pays des Cotes Catalanes

Tasted from tank, the 2007 Soula white – a blend of Sauvignon Blanc, Grenache Blanc, Grenache Gris, and Vermentino, among others – offers peppermint-like pungency, grapefruit and lime zest, sage, and apricot on the nose. Zesty, pungent, saline, peppery, and faintly bitter on the palate, it makes for an invigorating tonic with family resemblance to both the Eastern Loire and Wachau. This finishes with sap and sheer sass, as well as intriguingly shimmering mineral suggestions, and will at the very least prove fascinating for the next 12-18 months, during which it would serve well to whet your appetite, or for that matter to wake you in the middle of the night. (Only the Sauvignon portion of this wine is permitted to go through malo-lactic transformation, in contrast with the approach Gauby takes with his estate whites.) In 2001, Gerard Gauby, Eric Laguerre and (U.K. Gauby-agent) Roy Richards teamed up to create Le Soula. Their passive partner is the cooperative of Maury, whose members own the scattered parcels from which it is rendered, located on granite soils at around 1600-foot elevation near the village of St. Martin in the far west of viticultural Roussillon. None of the small quantity of these wines has to my knowledge yet reached the U.S.