Eric Pfifferling came to wine from beekeeping, turning his full attention to the family vines and leaving the village wine co-op in 2002 to make and bottle his own. Tavel is the only appellation in France given over entirely to rose, one of the first drawn up in 1936. By Eric Pfifferling's time, Tavel's standing had slipped, the wines reshaped by chemical farming and a heavier modern style. He set out to make Tavel as it had once been made, and l'Anglore became the estate a generation of southern Rhone natural vignerons would look to. His sons Thibault and Joris now run the domaine, with Eric still close at hand.
The estate works around eighteen hectares of Tavel's older sites, the Grenache often past sixty years and co-planted with Cinsault, Clairette and Carignan. Farming is organic, and in the cellar Pfifferling works with whole bunches and carbonic maceration, with little or no added sulfur. The wines sit between rose and light red, often closer to the latter. At the centre is the Tavel that earned the estate its nickname, the Beaujolais of the south, alongside the Tavel Vintage, raised two years in tank as Tavel once was, and a small group of light reds bottled as Vin de France, too dark in colour to carry the Tavel name.
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