2019 Les Genoux
- Retail
- £50.00
- Member
- £40.00
- Case
- £300.00
- Case (Member)
- £240.00
- Varieties
- Grenache
- Carignan
- Grenache Gris
- Grenache Blanc
- Vintage
- 2019
- Country
- France
- Region
- Roussillon
- Alcohol
- 14.25%
- Bottle size
- 750 mL
- Drinking Window
- 2021 - 2031
Awards
- Title
- Master - 97/100
- Year
- 2021
- Event
- Grenache Global Wine Masters from The Drinks Business
- Description
This is our rare, single-vineyard wine, which is only produced in the best years, and in 2018 only 1,064 bottles were produced.
- Eyes
Les Genoux is less intensely coloured than the regular cuveé, as it contains 10-15% white and pink grapes.
- Nose
The nose is more complex that our main wine and is more perfumed, spicy and delicate. This year's use of a brand new 'Icone' barrel - Seguin Moreau's top-of-the-range longer-seasoned French oak has imparted a rich, generous vanilla-y nose, that almost resembles a Rioja Reserva but we still find the same layers of raspberry and wild strawberry, with wafts of rosemary and fennel. There's also hints of slatey minerals and even a note of iodine.
- Mouth
Initially soft, and quite shy the palate slowly unveils an array of delicate red fruits like wild strawberries and red fruit pastilles. The gentle vanillas, and subtle seasoned oak cushion a delicate almost Pinot/Tempranillo fruit, and echoes of garrigue herbs and fennel keep intriguing a palate of surprising length and complexity.
- Body
medium
- Winemaking Notes
The source of the fruit for our 'Les Genoux' cuveé are the wonderful 100+ year-old vines in our ancient Coume de Roy vineyard. All the grapes are picked by hand, and any selection needed to eliminate less than perfect grapes is done in the vineyard. This year we ended up with five demi-muids (500 L barrels) up-ended with the ends taken out. Two of them were filled with whole bunches, crushed under-foot, and plunged gently by hand, twice or three times a day, during the fermentation. At pressing, the wine was drained into one 500L Seguin Moreau 'Icone' barrel, and the pressings blended with other Grenache pressings in another 500L barrel. After 15 months of ageing, the two barrels were blended together to create the 2019 Les Genoux cuvée.
- Growing Conditions
After a very dry, but not especially cold winter, spring began early, and was extremely dry, until flowering season, which was damp and warm. The temperature soared in June, with a late June day topping out at 42 degrees, the rest of the summer was ideal - warm temperatures, an occasional rain to keep the vines healthy. This year harvest season was marked by two or three significant rainfall events, which made choosing the picking date a little complicated, but early October was dry, and we waited until the 11th Oct to pick our Coume de Roy block.
- Food Pairing
Excellent on its own as a 'vino di meditazione' (best appreciated with a good friend), Les Genoux is also a wonderful match for charcuterie (especially finnochiona, or fennel salami), and the perfumed, elegant style makes it pretty versatile.
Reviews
Tamlyn Currin
JancisRobinson.com - Professional
jancisrobinson.com
May 25, 2021 8:01This, to me, is the soul of Roussillon in a glass. It’s a wine that is like a liquid form of amber, in the way it holds a moment of time, a story, a place, in suspension. The ‘amber’ of Roussillon is ruby red and it glows. It holds the rocks, the garrigue, the wide-flung spaces, the wind, in a moment of a mouthful. A wine like this tastes of memories and music, dust at sunset and the sweet comfort of a farm-kitchen stove-top bubbling with jam pots (cherry juice smeared across the work tops and dripping onto the floor). There is research that suggests that bees, who don’t live much more than three weeks, have a collective, ancient memory. I taste this and wonder, idly, Alice-in-Wonderlanderly, whether a young wine has, in its core, the memory of those old vines. (TC)
17
Tamlyn Currin
www.jancisrobinson.com - Professional
www.jancisrobinson.comTasted from a mini sample bottle. 70% Grenache, 20% Carignan, 5% Grenache Gris, 5% Grenache Blanc. 1,064 bottles made.
Violet and sweet spices, Turkish delight. A wine that turned more and more peppery in the glass, without losing an ounce of its succulent juiciness. ‘Squelchy with deliciousness’, I scrawled, ‘Demanding to be drunk now. The tannins are unspeakably fine.’ Like the wine as a whole. It’s as if Howard-Sneyd has bottled the soul of Roussillon. (TC)
14.2% Drink 2023–2034
18 / 2018
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