{"id":3148,"date":"2019-03-24T22:21:16","date_gmt":"2019-03-24T22:21:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.winex.com\/stockreport\/?p=3148"},"modified":"2019-03-24T22:21:16","modified_gmt":"2019-03-24T22:21:16","slug":"chateau-lou-reminiscent-of-manfred-krankls-sqn-sina-qua-non-syrahs-and-under40","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.winex.com\/stockreport\/2019\/03\/24\/chateau-lou-reminiscent-of-manfred-krankls-sqn-sina-qua-non-syrahs-and-under40\/","title":{"rendered":"CHATEAU L\u2019OU: “REMINISCENT OF MANFRED KRANKL\u2019S SQN (SINA QUA NON) SYRAHS” (and under$40!)"},"content":{"rendered":"

We are nothing if not persistent.\u00a0 Sure we sold a bit of this in an email a while back but nowhere near what we should have.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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!\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>L’Ou is a fantastic bottle of Syrah for the fare and we though it definitely deserved another mention.\u00a0 Here is a streamlined (sort of) version of the original piece…<\/p>\n

“…We started promoting what we affectionately call \u2018the Sud\u2019 (French for \u2018south\u2019) about a quarter century ago, though admittedly a lot of the area\u2019s potential \u2018thunder\u2019 was stolen by the Rhone which had an unprecedented string of exceptional vintages not long after the ‘Sud’ started breaking on te scene.\u00a0\u00a0Even given its long history, when one considers the remoteness, lack of flagship wineries, and association with \u2018industrial volume\u2019 production, it probably was predictable that buyers wouldn\u2019t flock to the Sud right away.<\/p>\n

Still when people in the region realized they had everything they needed to produce wines that could compete on the world stage.\u00a0 Unique soils, lots of sunshine, mediating influence from the sea, it was a pretty special place to grow grapes.\u00a0 \u00a0All one had to do was drop a few clusters from the vines so the remaining grapes could be more concentrated and voila<\/em>.<\/p>\n

S\u00e9verine and Philippe Bourrier were pretty early to the party that started around the mid-90s.\u00a0 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 Pyr\u00e9n\u00e9es-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, S\u00e9verine 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 Caudi\u00e8s-de-Fenouill\u00e8des.<\/p>\n

They are meticulous here.\u00a0 Beside the practicing organics, the grape harvest of Ch\u00e2teau 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.<\/p>\n

In our minds it is important for the region to establish a few successful estates to lend credibility to the region.\u00a0 Look what wineries like Booker and Saxum did for Paso Robles.\u00a0 We think the\u00a0Chateau de L’Ou Secret de Schistes Rouge Cotes Catalanes 2015<\/a>, <\/strong>an opaque, deeply colored, powerful and pure Syrah, can run with the \u2018big dogs\u2019 of the New World, though for all its extraction and presence, it doesn\u2019t sit heavily on the palate.\u00a0 It also has the added bonus of the unique minerality from the black schist soils that are here and in Priorat to the south.<\/p>\n

Jeb Dunnuck is making quite a statement in this piece about the Chateau L\u2019Ou, \u201cSaturated black in color, the 2015 IGP C\u00f4tes Catalanes <\/strong>Secret de Schistes is reminiscent of Manfred Krankl\u2019s SQN (Sina Qua Non) Syrahs<\/strong> 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<\/strong>\u201d – Jeb Dunnuck, Wine Advocate.<\/p>\n

We\u2019d make the point that Chateau L\u2019Ou, at $39.98, literally can be had for a fraction <\/em>of what things like Saxum and Sina Qua Non cost!\u00a0 Enough said.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We are nothing if not persistent.\u00a0 Sure we sold a bit of this in an email a while back but nowhere near what we should have.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Yes we get … Continue reading “CHATEAU L\u2019OU: “REMINISCENT OF MANFRED KRANKL\u2019S SQN (SINA QUA NON) SYRAHS” (and under$40!)”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[27],"tags":[161,505,204,171],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.winex.com\/stockreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3148"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.winex.com\/stockreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.winex.com\/stockreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.winex.com\/stockreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.winex.com\/stockreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3148"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.winex.com\/stockreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3148\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3150,"href":"https:\/\/www.winex.com\/stockreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3148\/revisions\/3150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.winex.com\/stockreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.winex.com\/stockreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.winex.com\/stockreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}