The wines of Domaine Gramenon are old-vine Grenache at its most expressive: ripe, deeply fruited and light on its feet, with a freshness you rarely find this far south. They wear only the modest Cotes du Rhone appellation, which tells you nothing about how good they are. A former nurse, Michele Aubery-Laurent runs the estate with conviction. After her husband Philippe was killed in an accident in 1999, she carried the estate on alone and turned Gramenon into one of the south's true cult names. Today she works it with her son Maxime-Francois.
Set on a limestone bench at 300 metres in the Drome, the vines have been farmed organically since the 1980s and biodynamically since. The cellar is old-fashioned in the best sense: gravity, indigenous-yeast ferments with almost no sulphur, ageing in old demi-muids and foudres, no fining or filtration. That restraint is what lets the fruit speak. We've had four of the wines recently arrive: La Sagesse, La Papesse and the celebrated La Mémé from hundred-year-old vines, all old-vine Grenache, with L'Émouvante from old-vine Syrah.
Few names in Cotes du Rhone are chased the way this one is.
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