2022 Les Genoux

Retail: £50.00
Member: £40.00
Case: £300.00
Case (Member): £240.00

Varieties: Grenache Noir; Carignan; Grenache Gris; Grenache Blanc
Vintage: 2022
Country: France
Region: Roussillon
Alcohol: 13%
Bottle size: 750 mL
Drinking Window: 2024 - 2033

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Description: *This is our rare, single-vineyard wine, which is only produced in the best years. This year, only 1250 bottles were made.
Eyes: Les Genoux is less intensely coloured than the regular cuveé, as it contains 10-15% white and pink grapes.
Nose: This year's Les Genoux is a delicate, poised wine with ethereal pure red fruit and herbs on the nose. In spite of being Grenache grown in the hottest part of France, it still only clocks in at just over 13.0%. It is incredibly enticing, and the whole-bunch component adds freshness and a peppery bite to a core of extremely expressive wild strawberry and sweet liquorice fennel.
Mouth: Quite a punchy front palate with plenty of red fruits like strawberries and red fruit pastilles. There are gentle oak-derived vanillas, and subtle barrel seasoning accompanied by a rich, ripe, yet elegant Grenache palate picking up the wild strawberry theme and adding notes of orange peel, rosemary and fennel. A richer Les Genoux, but with a bright and persistent finish, and finely grained tannins.
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 six demi-muids (500 L barrels) up-ended with the ends taken out. Three 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 500L barrels, with the 'whole bunch' fruit going to our Seguin Moreau 'Icone' barrel, and the next best fermentations into a 2-year old Icone barrel. After 15 months of ageing, we bottled our 1000L as 'Les Genoux', possibly the finest we have made to date.
Growing Conditions: The Winter of 2021/22 was uncharacteristically dry, with 'normal' rain in April and May giving the vines enough moisture to commence the season's growth, and the lovely dry period during flowering in late May / June ensure the 'sortie' (successful flowering) was excellent, with LOADS of bunches. There then followed an exceptionally dry July and August which had us fearing that the vines would stop ripening, and that the grapes would just shrivel. Some relieving light rain in September kept the vines respiring, and we managed to harvest a good crop of plentiful bunches with very small grapes - with exceptional flavours. The Coume de Roy block gave its BEST EVER yield of about 3.5 Tonnes.
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.