xRevolutionary Grenache!
Fresh. Juicy. Crushable. These are the hallmarks of the new school of grenache wines. In France, Spain and beyond, producers have made a paradigm shift with the grape, offering up complex and refreshing wines, with structure and zesty fruit. Higher elevations, ancient vines, and whole clusters are just some of the tricks of the trade. Banished are the heady and alcoholic wines lacking acid. They may not have the majesty of Rayas’ platonic ideal, but these remain singular in their own way, and certainly rate high in deliciousness. Top names like L'Anglore, Comando G and Christophe Marin are the leaders of this new school, producing visionary and genre-bending renditions of this classic grape, and resurrecting its fortune. These are perfect with a chill during the warmer months, so now’s the time to stock up!
Almost no one represents this new movement more than Eric Pfifferling of the southern Rhone. A former beekeeper, he had been growing grapes and selling to his local co-op since the early 90s. Encounters with wines from natural wine legends like Marcel Lapierre and the Loire’s Thierry Puzelat set him on a new path. A conversion to organic viticulture and natural methods led to the founding of his pioneering Domaine de l'Anglore in 2002. From the start, the wines were a success, electrifying drinkers with their purity, finesse, and transgressive, whole-cluster style. Today, Anglore sits comfortably with the other paragons of natural winemaking in the south, like Gramenon and Leon Barral, and provides training to the next generation of star winemakers like Romain le Bars. Eric and his wife Marie, now joined by sons Thibault and Joris, craft over a dozen cuvees, mostly based on grenache. Although based in Tavel, few wines carry the AOP labels, as the appellation is rose-only, and his wines often blur lines between light reds and rose. In general, the wines have feet in two worlds – hewing to very traditional methods but set aside from more modern and marketable sensibilities. Eric actually makes two Tavel AOP wines. The first is more typical, a blend of grenache with smaller amounts of cinsault, carignan, and clairette. A short carbonic maceration is followed by a gentle pressing, with the finished wine a blend of the two. Lightly tannic and full of juicy spicy fruit, this sits in opposition to the more typical saignees made today in the region. The Tavel Vintage is even more structured and vies for the most serious of his wines. It comes from a single parcel of 70-year-old vines aged for 18 months in a single demi-muid. No fining, filtering, or sulfur, as with all the wines. His (very successful) idea of a vin de garde. There is a direct press rose as well, in Chemin de la Brune. Centenary vines of grenache grown outside Tavel, are supported by cinsault and aramon, which deepen the color and give some texture. Aged in steel for a year. Plummy, juicy and lifted, with a long finish. The same vineyard is the source for Nizon. With a longer maceration and time in old oak, Nizon turns the corner to fuller red, more berried, with silky and fine tannins. Pierre Chaude is one of the newer cuvees, from a parcel of grenache planted by his grandfather in the 50s. Like most vineyards here, it has a mix of soils, but notably has large flat rocks, similar to nearby Chateauneuf. Bright with fresh herbs and juicy, this is pure and dazzling grenache. Terre d'Ombre is also entirely grenache, although from crumbly blue marls peppered with garrigue. This cuvee undergoes a long, 6-week carbonic maceration; bottled in the spring, it’s an exuberant and effusive wine, bursting with herbs, red fruits and red floral notes. Anglore makes two other wines that meet the requirements of the AOP. The Lirac, drawn from all three colors of grenache, supported by mourvedre and clairette, is grown on a mix of sandy and rocky soils with limestone. It too has a longer maceration, turning out concentrated and tart red fruits like pomegranate and sour cherries. Cotes du Rhone Comeyre flips the script, with a near-total majority of carignan, in addition to grenache. Brooding and structured, this is dark-fruited and dense, with an engaging savoriness. Les Traverses is of a similar mold, based on old vines of syrah, with only a third grenache. Aged in steel, the dark fruit stays fresh and spicy, with hints of lavender and licorice. Eric’s favorite cuvee, Vejade, is an equal split of grenache and mourvedre, and is mostly bottled in magnum as a long keeper. Finally, there is the newest addition, Le Ruisseau, which is entirely mourvedre, produced in the same joyous manner, with bright purple fruits, leather and fine tannins. All are made in painfully tiny quantities, so best to when they’re seen.
Passion is at the heart of the Comando G project, started as a side hustle in 2008 by friends Fernando Garcia & Dani Landi. On weekends and holidays from their winemaking gigs, the pair wandered the mountains near Madrid, looking for the old-timers toiling away in heroic viticulture, selling their precious fruit at a loss to the local co-op, as well as remote, once-magnificent sites, now abandoned. They've managed to cobble together 10 Ha of grenache vines, along with smaller amounts of white grapes. It's now their full-time gig as the wines have become some of Spain's most wanted bottles and sparked a revolution in the vertiginous Sierra de Gredos region. Ancient vines, high elevations, and the imprint of granite are the key components of the wines, aromatic and detailed, with startingly vivid fruit and long, rocky tannins. They are exceptionally evocative of the wild places they are grown and are amazingly energetic. Broadly speaking, farming is all organic, with some sites seeing biodynamic treatments. Harvest, like the farming, is entirely manual and usually runs into October, thanks to the coolness of these elevations. Reds are generally whole-cluster pressed into vats for long macerations and natural fermentations, then moved to large oak (and sometimes clay amphora) for aging. La Bruja de Rozas is the entry level wine, born of sites with sandy granite soils, 40-65 years of age, and almost 3000' up above sea level. Ethereal and limpid, it is deeply aromatic and shimmers with brambly red fruit and a firm structure. La Brena is one of the top single parcel wines, with a half hectare of 60-year-old vines at nearly 4000' of elevation. Sleek and elegant red fruits married to earth, spice, and floral notes, the concentration building to the rounded tannins for a wine of presence, yet still weightless on the palate. Las Iruelas comes from a plot of head-pruned vines of a similar age, except here, the soils are more complex, with schist, slate, and quartz intermingled with the granite. In turn, there's darker, more brooding fruit and more intensity of spice on a muscular frame. Las Uvas de la Ira is from six plots – all over 70 years of age – scattered throughout the village of El Real de San Vicente, with incredibly varied expressions and harvests of grenache. This is a kaleidoscopic rendition of the grape, expansive in scope, yet refined. Across the lineup, wines from Comando G show incredible freshness, precision, and definition – little wonder why they're so sought after!
Christophe Marin is one of the newest entrants to the new school, founding his eponymous estate in 2019 in Maury, among the hills of the Cotes Catalanes. He has family ties to grape growing in nearby Rivesaltes, but more importantly, an extensive winemaking career in Burgundy, with ten years as cellar master at Vincent Girardin. He’s brought his Burgundian eye for exceptional terroirs and is currently making monovarietal, single vineyard wines. Biodynamic farming has followed as well, to help keep the native grasses and preserve the fragile schist soils. The lunar calendar further dictates picking, racking, and bottling practices in the cellar. In general, the hand-harvested fruit is cooled overnight before destemming and undergoing a 5-day maceration. It’s pressed into 288 L barrels for about a year of aging, before refreshing in steel for a few months, eventually bottled without fining or filtering. In comparison to Maury Sec and other Roussillon wines, Christophe’s are perfumed, graceful, and floral, with a precision befitting his background. Causseil de Mouillere is a .8 Ha site of 70-year-old vines, with a steep, south-facing slope, the soils dotted with large blocks of limestone. Coume Marie, planted to both grenache and carignan, is of a similar age, with just under a half hectare of vines situated in the more typical black schist soils. Here, the exposition of the steep slope is to the east and west, which keeps the grapes from baking. Nightly cooling winds off the Corbieres range help preserve acidity for all the sites, allowing the grapes to mature slowly, for deep, vibrant fruit. The wines are lifted, with stylish red fruits, white spice, leather, and grounded in a firm core of minerality. With just two incredible releases, Christophe Marin is already turning heads and will surely be a superstar in no time!
Almost no one represents this new movement more than Eric Pfifferling of the southern Rhone. A former beekeeper, he had been growing grapes and selling to his local co-op since the early 90s. Encounters with wines from natural wine legends like Marcel Lapierre and the Loire’s Thierry Puzelat set him on a new path. A conversion to organic viticulture and natural methods led to the founding of his pioneering Domaine de l'Anglore in 2002. From the start, the wines were a success, electrifying drinkers with their purity, finesse, and transgressive, whole-cluster style. Today, Anglore sits comfortably with the other paragons of natural winemaking in the south, like Gramenon and Leon Barral, and provides training to the next generation of star winemakers like Romain le Bars. Eric and his wife Marie, now joined by sons Thibault and Joris, craft over a dozen cuvees, mostly based on grenache. Although based in Tavel, few wines carry the AOP labels, as the appellation is rose-only, and his wines often blur lines between light reds and rose. In general, the wines have feet in two worlds – hewing to very traditional methods but set aside from more modern and marketable sensibilities. Eric actually makes two Tavel AOP wines. The first is more typical, a blend of grenache with smaller amounts of cinsault, carignan, and clairette. A short carbonic maceration is followed by a gentle pressing, with the finished wine a blend of the two. Lightly tannic and full of juicy spicy fruit, this sits in opposition to the more typical saignees made today in the region. The Tavel Vintage is even more structured and vies for the most serious of his wines. It comes from a single parcel of 70-year-old vines aged for 18 months in a single demi-muid. No fining, filtering, or sulfur, as with all the wines. His (very successful) idea of a vin de garde. There is a direct press rose as well, in Chemin de la Brune. Centenary vines of grenache grown outside Tavel, are supported by cinsault and aramon, which deepen the color and give some texture. Aged in steel for a year. Plummy, juicy and lifted, with a long finish. The same vineyard is the source for Nizon. With a longer maceration and time in old oak, Nizon turns the corner to fuller red, more berried, with silky and fine tannins. Pierre Chaude is one of the newer cuvees, from a parcel of grenache planted by his grandfather in the 50s. Like most vineyards here, it has a mix of soils, but notably has large flat rocks, similar to nearby Chateauneuf. Bright with fresh herbs and juicy, this is pure and dazzling grenache. Terre d'Ombre is also entirely grenache, although from crumbly blue marls peppered with garrigue. This cuvee undergoes a long, 6-week carbonic maceration; bottled in the spring, it’s an exuberant and effusive wine, bursting with herbs, red fruits and red floral notes. Anglore makes two other wines that meet the requirements of the AOP. The Lirac, drawn from all three colors of grenache, supported by mourvedre and clairette, is grown on a mix of sandy and rocky soils with limestone. It too has a longer maceration, turning out concentrated and tart red fruits like pomegranate and sour cherries. Cotes du Rhone Comeyre flips the script, with a near-total majority of carignan, in addition to grenache. Brooding and structured, this is dark-fruited and dense, with an engaging savoriness. Les Traverses is of a similar mold, based on old vines of syrah, with only a third grenache. Aged in steel, the dark fruit stays fresh and spicy, with hints of lavender and licorice. Eric’s favorite cuvee, Vejade, is an equal split of grenache and mourvedre, and is mostly bottled in magnum as a long keeper. Finally, there is the newest addition, Le Ruisseau, which is entirely mourvedre, produced in the same joyous manner, with bright purple fruits, leather and fine tannins. All are made in painfully tiny quantities, so best to when they’re seen.
Passion is at the heart of the Comando G project, started as a side hustle in 2008 by friends Fernando Garcia & Dani Landi. On weekends and holidays from their winemaking gigs, the pair wandered the mountains near Madrid, looking for the old-timers toiling away in heroic viticulture, selling their precious fruit at a loss to the local co-op, as well as remote, once-magnificent sites, now abandoned. They've managed to cobble together 10 Ha of grenache vines, along with smaller amounts of white grapes. It's now their full-time gig as the wines have become some of Spain's most wanted bottles and sparked a revolution in the vertiginous Sierra de Gredos region. Ancient vines, high elevations, and the imprint of granite are the key components of the wines, aromatic and detailed, with startingly vivid fruit and long, rocky tannins. They are exceptionally evocative of the wild places they are grown and are amazingly energetic. Broadly speaking, farming is all organic, with some sites seeing biodynamic treatments. Harvest, like the farming, is entirely manual and usually runs into October, thanks to the coolness of these elevations. Reds are generally whole-cluster pressed into vats for long macerations and natural fermentations, then moved to large oak (and sometimes clay amphora) for aging. La Bruja de Rozas is the entry level wine, born of sites with sandy granite soils, 40-65 years of age, and almost 3000' up above sea level. Ethereal and limpid, it is deeply aromatic and shimmers with brambly red fruit and a firm structure. La Brena is one of the top single parcel wines, with a half hectare of 60-year-old vines at nearly 4000' of elevation. Sleek and elegant red fruits married to earth, spice, and floral notes, the concentration building to the rounded tannins for a wine of presence, yet still weightless on the palate. Las Iruelas comes from a plot of head-pruned vines of a similar age, except here, the soils are more complex, with schist, slate, and quartz intermingled with the granite. In turn, there's darker, more brooding fruit and more intensity of spice on a muscular frame. Las Uvas de la Ira is from six plots – all over 70 years of age – scattered throughout the village of El Real de San Vicente, with incredibly varied expressions and harvests of grenache. This is a kaleidoscopic rendition of the grape, expansive in scope, yet refined. Across the lineup, wines from Comando G show incredible freshness, precision, and definition – little wonder why they're so sought after!
Christophe Marin is one of the newest entrants to the new school, founding his eponymous estate in 2019 in Maury, among the hills of the Cotes Catalanes. He has family ties to grape growing in nearby Rivesaltes, but more importantly, an extensive winemaking career in Burgundy, with ten years as cellar master at Vincent Girardin. He’s brought his Burgundian eye for exceptional terroirs and is currently making monovarietal, single vineyard wines. Biodynamic farming has followed as well, to help keep the native grasses and preserve the fragile schist soils. The lunar calendar further dictates picking, racking, and bottling practices in the cellar. In general, the hand-harvested fruit is cooled overnight before destemming and undergoing a 5-day maceration. It’s pressed into 288 L barrels for about a year of aging, before refreshing in steel for a few months, eventually bottled without fining or filtering. In comparison to Maury Sec and other Roussillon wines, Christophe’s are perfumed, graceful, and floral, with a precision befitting his background. Causseil de Mouillere is a .8 Ha site of 70-year-old vines, with a steep, south-facing slope, the soils dotted with large blocks of limestone. Coume Marie, planted to both grenache and carignan, is of a similar age, with just under a half hectare of vines situated in the more typical black schist soils. Here, the exposition of the steep slope is to the east and west, which keeps the grapes from baking. Nightly cooling winds off the Corbieres range help preserve acidity for all the sites, allowing the grapes to mature slowly, for deep, vibrant fruit. The wines are lifted, with stylish red fruits, white spice, leather, and grounded in a firm core of minerality. With just two incredible releases, Christophe Marin is already turning heads and will surely be a superstar in no time!
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