2018 Vin de Pays des Cotes Catalanes

Certified organic, certified biodynamic. Unfiltered. Old-vine Carignan, Syrah and Grenache on mostly granite with some schist. Spontaneous fermentation. Whole-bunch maceration for 12–15 days. Aged just under two years in used wooden vats, demi-muids and tank. Unfined, unfiltered. Farm and well-used, supple riding leather. Meatiness and juniper, dried cherries pressed into ancient wooden pews, rose petals blown into sumac, dried blood, rust. So fine it's almost fragile, and yet it builds up with a roar of defiance and wildness at the back of the throat. You'd taste this and think it was over 14%, the strength and smoky-chilli heat of the wine is so insistent. And then you notice the butterfly-wing transparency, the carpaccio melt of the texture… Cool, like paper-thin slices of biltong and granite dipped in a mountain stream, tucked under a mossy rock. A wine that marches off-road to the beat of a faery drum. Day five of being open: high, rose-petalled perfume. This really does smell like an old-fashioned rose garden in the evening. Perfumed spices, almost Middle Eastern in fragrance and complexity. The fruit is super-fine, almost nothing more than a caress on the palate, a sable-hair paintbrush dipped in rose water, rust, dried blood and raspberry juice; a streak of sunrise across parchment bleeding into the fabric of the paper. (TC)