Jefford on Monday: Roussillon’s Three Js

Andrew Jefford finds great winemaking near Maury.

Wine lovers may remember 2003 as the hottest summer since the big bang, but it began with a very cold winter — and by autumn, too, the cold was again biting deeply. “Amanda, Sam and I were staying in a tiny cottage in a 9-house hamlet called La Vialasse in the middle of the Corbières”. Master of Wine Justin Howard-Sneyd, at that time one of Britain’s best-known supermarket wine buyers, was looking back on a turning point in his life.

“It was late October. We’d bought a few bottles in Maury earlier that day. Sam was aged five back then. He was asleep in bed, the wind was howling around the eaves, the wood-burning stove was lit, we’d got the doors of the stove open and a thick duvet wrapped around us, then I pulled the cork of the Clos del Rey 2001. It unleashed this extraordinary explosion of deep black fruit, plus garrigue aromas of myrtle, juniper, rosemary, and a palate of crushed black slate. Somewhere into the second glass, the vineyard dream, which until then had been rather insubstantial, took root. We’d found the kind of wine that I wanted to make.”

Clos del Rey is the creation of Jacques Montagné, and a little earlier this summer, I stood with Jacques, his son Julien and Justin in their cellar: the three Js. The reminiscences continued.

“There was a crisis of the vineyards around 20 or 25 years ago,” Jacques pointed out. “No one wanted our fortified wines any more; the market was collapsing. We had to do something.” He bought up the best old parcels of Grenache and Carignan he could find. The vines, he felt, had to have a future.

At the same moment, celebrated St-Emilion garagiste Jean-Luc Thunevin arrived in Maury, lured to Roussillon by those same old vines. He fell in love with the Clos del Rey wines. “He said to me ‘You vinify and I’ll sell'”. Jacques remembers being invited over to St-Emilion for en primeur season. He was astonished, as an obscure winemaker from a troubled fortified-wine zone, suddenly to find himself sitting with Thunevin, Alain Vauthier and Peter Sisseck as Jancis Robinson and Michel Bettane called to taste.

Thunevin egged him on to follow the garage techniques of the day. “Crazy things: new wood for malo, and then even more new wood afterwards.” Three years later, Jacques was joined in the cellar by Julien. At that point, he and Jean-Luc Thunevin parted company — and he barely ages his wine in any wood at all any more. “No more barriques! I got fed up with barriques.”

Father and son have 50 ha — but they only vinify the eight best hectares themselves, which goes some way to explaining why their wines are so good; the rest of the fruit goes to the Maury co-operative. Some tasting notes for this hidden star of the Roussillon are given below.

Howard-Sneyd, meanwhile, couldn’t forget the wine that he and Amanda drank in the autumn cold. He subsequently made friends with local British winemaker Richard Case of Domaine de la Pertuisane – and he asked him to report back if any good local vineyards came up for sale. Thus it was that, at an even colder moment in February 2004, Justin found himself (without Amanda this time) standing in a bleak vineyard of old vines on stony schist soils called Coume de Roy, sited directly beneath some of the very finest Clos del Rey vineyards. “I didn’t,” admits Justin, “have any idea at all about what I was doing, or what I should be looking for. It’s hard to tell much about a vineyard in February. But … I said yes.” This was the birth of Domaine of the Bee.

It could have been a folly. It’s hard to underestimate the challenge of Roussillon, where the average yield is around 25 hl/ha, and where outstanding wine is more likely to come from vines yielding around 15 hl/ha (that was the figure Justin used for his business plan).

“We asked ourselves how we could create a supply chain whereby we could make any money. I also realised that, as a producer, the only way I was going to maximise my enjoyment of my wine was by knowing my consumers.” So 85% of Domaine of the Bee’s production is sold in the UK, and of that around 80 per cent is sold directly, via the domain’s own wine club and at fairs. “It’s so important to tell your story and get a share of the headspace of your consumers.”

Even though the couple have bought more vineyards, giving them a total of just over 4 ha, it doesn’t justify a winery of their own — so they work with Jean-Marc Lafage, who bought Ch St Roch from Marc and Emma Bournazeau-Florensa (see last week’s blog) in 2007, and who also runs Domaine Lafage — a total of 170 ha altogether. The hyper-professional Lafarge had worked around the world as a consultant winemaker after training in part in Australia with Andrew Mitchell in the Clare valley, as well as at Brokenwood and de Bortoli, so the fit with the internationally minded Howard-Sneyd is a good one.

Both, though, are besotted with the Roussillon’s old vines, and the rich, concentrated, masterful wines they offer. “Those old vines are like people in a retirement home,” reflects Justin. “All you have to do is talk to them, and you’ll find they have something very interesting to say.” And the alcohol levels?

“Consumers,” suggests Justin, “like the flavour of wine at 15% alcohol. Ok, they’ve learned that it’s now fashionable to say that you want a wine at lower alcohol, but it wasn’t very long ago that people looked at the label of a wine and said they wanted it to be higher. We learned a lesson with the 2013 vintage. It was lighter here and the critics all loved it. But the public didn’t like it; that vintage sold less well. It’s a terrible mistake to say that everyone is moving towards low-alcohol wines.”

I agree (look out for a feature on this subject in the December edition of Decanter magazine). And if you object to wine at 14.5% or 15%, you’ll never have a chance to enjoy the wines which best express the sunlight, the stone, the wind and plunging, soaring hills of Roussillon. That, as I hope the following notes indicate, would be a shame.

Tasting the wines of the Three Js

Domaine of the Bee

Domaine of the Bee, The Bee-Side, Côtes Catalanes 2015

In the difficult 2014 vintage, pest problems meant that Justin Howard-Sneyd had to throw away half his crop, while the rest made a lighter wine than usual. The Carignan wasn’t retained “but the Grenache had a Pinot-like style and we felt that something had to be done with it.” Thus The Bee-Side was born – and it’s now a permanent feature, blending domain Grenache and purchased Grenache, both of them in a lighter, more aerial style and given a long cold soak (a technique favoured by Jean-Marc Lafage in general). This is clear red in colour, with fresh, pure strawberry fruits: toothsome, lifted and lively. Look out, too, for a liquorice-like freshness in the finish. There’s almost no tannin here, and the wine could take a chill. 90; 14.5%

Domaine of the Bee, Côtes du Roussillon-Villages 2015

The blend of the main domain wine is Grenache and Carignan in roughly equal proportions. The Carignan is mostly steel-fermented, while all the Grenache and the rest of the Carignan is cold-macerated in opened, upturned demi-muids before being fermented, with two or three punchdowns a day. It’s then run into a mixture of demi-muids and barriques (one quarter new) for 14 months. It’s dark and deep in colour, with rich, voluptuous black-fruit scents: ripe damsons and sweet, juicy blackberries. On the palate, this sumptuous wine is richly fruited, sweet and succulent, yet there’s a freshness there from its lively tannins and gentle, ripe acidity. The sweetness eases to a dry, faintly spicy finish. This is serious yet gratifying Roussillon which drinks well now yet will age well, too. 93; 15%

Domaine of the Bee, Single Barrel No 14, Carignan, Côtes Catalanes 2015

Pure, demi-muid-fermented Maury Carignan from the upper part of the La Roque vineyard: “so good,” said Justin, “that it seemed a terrible shame to blend it away”. This is very dark in colour, with chic, classy black-fruit scents: brightly sweet, yet fresh and vital. On the palate, it is deep, intense and driving; there’s a sense of power unleashed, yet it’s savage and austere at the same time. No single ‘Bee’ wine sums up the stony, wind-tortured landscape in which it came into being better than this one. 94; 14.5%

Domaine of the Bee, Les Genoux, Côtes Catalanes 2015

Les Genoux (‘the bee’s knees’, of course) is only produced in the best years, and comes from the oldest vines in the Coume de Roy vineyard, whatever the variety – so this is a blend of Grenache and Carignan with both Grenache Gris and Grenache Blanc, all from vines of over 90 years old. The red-white blend gives it a paler colour, and it’s a wine in which aroma provides almost as much pleasure as flavour: wax, bramble, pollen, strawberry, thyme, gentian root … the longer you sniff and sip, the more you find. It’s relatively smooth in texture, and is not in any way sweet or exaggerated, but full of poised ripeness. 92; 14.5%

Clos del Rey

Clos del Rey, Le Sabina, Côtes du Roussillon-Villages 2017

This great-value wine (available from retailers locally for less than 10 euros, incredibly enough) is two-thirds Grenache with Syrah and Carignan: a great draught of pure Maury fruit: chunky, dense, sweet-fruited yet finishing dry and stony, and packed with the drama and grandeur of the place. 91; 14.5%

Clos del Rey, L’Aragone, Côtes du Roussillon-Villages 2016

Carignan-dominated (between ourselves, maybe a bit more than that), packed with the unique perfumes this variety can surrender when it’s ancient, wind-dried, schist-bathed, star-struck and surrounded by hundreds of kilometers of Mediterranean scrublands: blackcurrants and sloes, with grapefruit pith, rue, gentian and cade, like a gin distiller’s suitcase. It’s dense, deep, almost shattering on the palate: taut and tight, rigorous and long, murmuringly aromatic throughout. The extraordinary wine is the greatest Carignan I have ever tasted – and no one is at present importing it to the UK. 96; 14.5%

Clos del Rey, Côtes du Roussillon-Villages 2015

This, the domain’s top wine, comes from a small parcel of 130-year-old vines (two-thirds Carignan, one-third Grenache), and it has what must be France’s simplest, most artless yet also most touchingly beautiful wine labels. It does see a little wood, and you can’t say that’s a mistake: the fruit still has the aromatic command and authority of the other wines, but now there is a little creamy cosseting, too, and a sense of beeswax polish and poise. On the palate, it is crafted in best ‘liqueur of the garrigue’ style: deep-pile blackcurrant fruits, lavish and dense, resonant, echoing like a bird cry around the hills. A quick look at both the 2013 and the 2004 vintages of this wine shows how the aromatic layers grow with time (look out for violet, mushroom and leather) as the wines grows more luscious and succulent still. 94; 14.5%

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