roussillon

LAFAGE NARASSA 18: LAFAGE DELIVERS AGAIN

As many times as we have promoted wines from the portfolio of Jean-Marc Lafage, it would be hard to imagine that we haven’t covered every conceivable aspect of the winery’s background. To give you a short synopsis we will pull a few lines from the Wine Advocate, longtime cheerleader for Lafage through multiple writers over the years, and his remarkable value portfolio. From current Advocate Rhone editor Joe Czerwinski, “The dynamic Jean Marc Lafage has rapidly expanded his holdings and production in the past decade, since he began working with American importer Eric Solomon. There’s a huge, state-of-the-art winery and a seemingly endless number of cuvées to taste through… Even if I’m slightly less enthusiastic than the previous WA reviewer about some of the entry-level wines, there are still many screaming values in the lineup…”

Like the man said, there are seemingly endless bottlings to evaluate, but we always make it a point to check out anything from Jean Marc because his ‘hit rate’ over the last decade or so has been amazing, and the ‘value factor’ virtually unmatched. The hits just keep on coming. Today’s subject is one of the more recent additions to the extensive Lafage lineup, kicking off in 2014. We sold a good bit of that 2014 Domaine Lafage Narassa in a very short time back in November of 2016, no surprise, really, given the review (Wine Advocate 93) and the price ($15.98). We had another good run with the 2017 last year, a Jeb Dunnuck 94.

We tasted the newest edition, now called Famille Lafage Cotes Catalanes Narassa 2018, recently and felt that Jean Marc was ‘in the money’ once again. Since that 2014 opening salvo, every wine scored over 91 points and sold for under $20. Broad and ample in the mouth, the 2018 had plenty of round fruit, supple, laid-back tannins, well integrated acidity and a subtle streak of minerality courtesy of the black schist soils around the Roussillon town of Maury. The grapes are sourced from 60+-year-old vines, the old vines sitting in unique, aforementioned black schist soils in a fairly remote area in southern France. This distinct, somewhat ‘wild’ area is an important key to the special character of the wines from this region.

We aren’t surprised that Jeb Dunnuck was on board once again. How can you not cheer for a producer that is making wines that are both ample and nuanced for this kind of price! Jeb’s take on the 2018 Narassa, “ Almost all Grenache yet with 8% Syrah, the deep purple 2018 Narassa gives up a gorgeous bouquet of blueberries, kirsch liqueur, smoked game, violets, and lavender. It’s rich, medium to full-bodied, beautifully concentrated, and has a great finish…93 points.”

If a player is on a hot streak, you want to get the ball in their hands. Lafage definitely is in the ‘zone’ and has been for a while. We have sold a lot of Lafage over the years, and for good reason. But each of the bottlings we have offered, while generally uniform in the sense that they perform well above their stations and provide superb value, are each of distinctive personality as well.

These days many value wines are not ‘created in the vineyard’. The winemaking ‘formula’ overrides everything else. That is the beauty of Lafage. The wines not only deliver quality and value, but retain the character and purity of their region as well. One of importer Eric Solomon’s credos is ‘place over process’. None of his expansive legion of wineries is any better an example of that than Lafage. Once again, as always, it’s a lot of wine for the fare ($19.98).

CHATEAU L’OU: “REMINISCENT OF MANFRED KRANKL’S SQN (SINA QUA NON) SYRAHS” (and under$40!)

We are nothing if not persistent. Sure we sold a bit of this in an email a while back but nowhere near what we should have. Here’s a $40 wine that was compared to one of the icons of California wine, SQN, which folks are lined up to throw $300-400 bottle at. Yes we get the whole ‘I got something that you don’t have thing’, but the math is pretty convincing when you can get a wine that carried a 96 point tout, and you could buy 5-7 bottles for what you’d pay for a single bottle of SQN, provided you even got the chance to buy that one bottle at all! L’Ou is a fantastic bottle of Syrah for the fare and we though it definitely deserved another mention. Here is a streamlined (sort of) version of the original piece…

“…We started promoting what we affectionately call ‘the Sud’ (French for ‘south’) about a quarter century ago, though admittedly a lot of the area’s potential ‘thunder’ was stolen by the Rhone which had an unprecedented string of exceptional vintages not long after the ‘Sud’ started breaking on te scene. Even given its long history, when one considers the remoteness, lack of flagship wineries, and association with ‘industrial volume’ production, it probably was predictable that buyers wouldn’t flock to the Sud right away.

Still when people in the region realized they had everything they needed to produce wines that could compete on the world stage. Unique soils, lots of sunshine, mediating influence from the sea, it was a pretty special place to grow grapes. All one had to do was drop a few clusters from the vines so the remaining grapes could be more concentrated and voila.

Séverine and Philippe Bourrier were pretty early to the party that started around the mid-90s. In 1998, they bought the estate of 30 hectares in one piece planted with 26 hectares of vineyards and 4 hectares of olive trees in the town of Montescot in the Pyrénées-Orientales, 10 km south of Perpignan. They immediately converted the entire property to organic farming. At the time, only 3 properties in the Roussillon were practicing organics. In 2009, Séverine and Philippe decided to expand their terroir options by purchasing 8 hectares of vines in Saint-Paul-de-Fenouillet and 7 hectares of vines in Caudiès-de-Fenouillèdes.

They are meticulous here. Beside the practicing organics, the grape harvest of Château de L’Ou is exclusively manual and they are specific about picking between sunrise and noon to help the grapes retain freshness. The grapes are harvested into crates of about 10 kg so as not to be damaged during transport and to facilitate handling in the cellar. The date of harvest is determined by tasting a sample of berries with particular attention to the fineness of the skin and seeds.

In our minds it is important for the region to establish a few successful estates to lend credibility to the region. Look what wineries like Booker and Saxum did for Paso Robles. We think the Chateau de L’Ou Secret de Schistes Rouge Cotes Catalanes 2015, an opaque, deeply colored, powerful and pure Syrah, can run with the ‘big dogs’ of the New World, though for all its extraction and presence, it doesn’t sit heavily on the palate. It also has the added bonus of the unique minerality from the black schist soils that are here and in Priorat to the south.

Jeb Dunnuck is making quite a statement in this piece about the Chateau L’Ou, “Saturated black in color, the 2015 IGP Côtes Catalanes Secret de Schistes is reminiscent of Manfred Krankl’s SQN (Sina Qua Non) Syrahs with its deep, unctuous, layered profile. Cassis, chocolate, licorice, smoked herbs and ample minerality all emerge from this full-bodied, sexy beauty that just begs to be drunk. Possessing ripe tannin, a stacked mid-palate and a great finish, it will be better in a year or two and keep for a decade…96 points” – Jeb Dunnuck, Wine Advocate.

We’d make the point that Chateau L’Ou, at $39.98, literally can be had for a fraction of what things like Saxum and Sina Qua Non cost! Enough said.”

BILA HAUT: AN UNCOMMON VALUE ONCE AGAIN

Not everything in the wine business makes sense (in fact a lot of it doesn’t). Take for example Michel Chapoutier. Here’s a guy that makes some of the most compelling single vineyard wines in the world from iconic sites on Hermitage. Yet we can’t remember the last time we got really excited about one of the other bottlings he presents under the Chapoutier label. You rarely see these on our shelves as they are serviceable but not compelling.

Enigma? You bet. Yet this guys makes some of the best values in the wine world. He just doesn’t do it in the Rhone. His Bila Haut program in the Roussillon has been an iconic source of value since Michel bought the property in 1999. Yeah they have put out a number of memorable specialty bottlings during that time, but it is their bread-and-butter entry level offerings that amaze the most, vintage in and vintage out.

The beautifully appointed Bila-Haut (Chapoutier) Cotes Du Roussillon Villages Les Vignes de Bila-Haut Rouge 2017 hits that mark again. Since it is one of the first 2017 reds to hit the floor we can’t make any sweeping statements about the vintage. But if this wine is any indication, it’s looking good. The fruit component suggests red and black fruits, some white pepper, tea, and a subtle underpinning of slatey minerality. There’s plenty of energy and urgency to the fruit and an underly lift comparable to the 2016.

While we aren’t necessarily in agreement with Jeb Dunnuck’s suggestion that this is a doppelganger for a Saint Joseph, and see more of the higher toned Grenache in the mix, he got the rest right, “The 2017 Côtes du Roussillon Villages Les Vignes de Bila Haut reminds me of an impressive St Joseph (despite having lots of Grenache in the blend) with its black raspberry, white pepper, and leafy herb aromas and flavors. It’s seamless, elegant, and balanced, with both acidity and richness. Put this in a blind lineup of Northern Rhônes and shock your friends. ..92 points.” As always, a fine buy at $12.98.

VTV Cotes du Roussillon Villages Tautavel Silex 2015: Poster Child for the New Roussillon

We marvel everyday and try to understand why some things we expect to be big aren’t and others for which we have no expectations are. The VTV Cotes du Roussillon Villages Tautavel Silex 2015 falls into that first category. Yeah, the name is a little long and even after a couple of decades there is still rather limited awareness of the Roussillon. Beyond that all of the descriptors are ‘aces’. From Jeb Dunnuck, “… The 2015 Cotes du Roussillon Villages Tautavel Les Vingt Marches is a hidden gem in this vintage. Made from mostly Syrah, with 20% Grenache and 10% Carignan, this full-bodied, deep and voluptuously textured red is loaded with notions of plums, violets and spice, with some Syrah meatiness developing with air. Completely destemmed and aged all in tank, I’d enjoy bottles over the coming 4-6 years. 93 points.”

You’ve got all of the right stuff here…old vines (the original review mentioned 50 year-old vines), unique terroir, an outstanding vintage, and a talented winemaker. Everything you would expect out of a wine with those parameters is there and then some. At $25 it can give a lot of Chateauneufs a run for their money. Is the market so saturated with great wines that something like this can be invisible? The wines emerging from the Roussillon these days are the best to ever come out of the region, and this powerhouse red is a poster child for that. You can buy a great Roussillon or a mediocre Cabernet for this kind of price…easy choice for us.

MO’ LAFAGE

The eye-popping values from Jean-Marc Lafage have been coming at a prolific rate. If we did full emails on the every one of them, which would be easy to do given how good and how well priced they all are, we’d start looking like some sort of Lafage-of-the-Month Club. So every now and again we’ll publish a little something on the ‘down low’, with the caveat that it could eventually be its own offer at some point. Don’t confuse this smaller format with a lack of enthusiasm. What Lafage has been doing of late is some sort of unprecedented run of ‘hits’ and this is simply one more. Our task is to keep you informed.

There are so many different and exciting cuvees, it’s hard to keep them all straight. We counted over 50 different wines reviewed by the Wine Advocate, some only with a single writeup. The 2015 Domaine Lafage Cotes du Roussillon Villages Lieu Dit La Narassa is only the second in this particular series, an admirable followup to the 93-point 2014 and we think even a little more substantial. Visually it is markedly different than the majority of the bottles in that it comes in a weapon-ready, super-heavy Bordeaux styled bottle with a black label (most others are Burgundy shaped and ‘dressed’ in white). We aren’t sure what the message is, but the wine is definitely an attention-getter in the glass as well.

Grown in the typical black schist soils of the Roussillon, the 60 to 70-year-old vines of Syrah and Grenache are farmed organically, hand harvested, and brought up in 80% concrete and 20% large neutral barrels. The harvest regimen is a little different for this bottling. It is made in a semi-ripasso style by harvesting the Grenache in successive passes picking only the ripest clusters. Once at the cellars the fruit is destemmed and only the best berries are chosen for fermentation after a short pre-fermentation maceration. The blend is 80% Grenache and 20% Syrah.

This one is bold, full, flavored and definitely expressive of this unique terroir near the village of Maury and will stand up to the heartiest of fare. The Wine Advocate’s Jeb Dunnuck was glowing again in his ‘barrel’ review stating, “Notes of cassis, toasted spice, chocolate and licorice all emerge from the 2015 Cotes du Roussillon Villages Lieu Dit La Narassa…This hedonistic, downright sexy, ripe and layered beauty will drink nicely right out of the gate…91-93 Points.”

Barrels scores tend to be conservative and, in 2015, almost everything was outstanding so you don’t get as much ‘separation’. So we suspect if it gets a final review, it will finish on the high end. We think the 2015 Narassa has even a bit more muscle than the 2014, and definitely a riper profile. Once again the magic is that this is an expansive, engaging wine that only costs $15 a bottle. How does he keep doing it?