Domaine de Cébène Ex Arena 2017 IGP Pays d'Oc

Grenache grown on Villafranchien soil (a mix of red clay and smooth pebbles), plus a little Mourvedre, grown on a 40-metre-deep bed of sea sediment and alluvial deposits in Corneilhan, just north of Béziers. Yields are very low, with just 20 hl/ha for the Grenache and a miniscule 10 hl/ha for the Mourvedre. In many ways, this is the most elegant of Brigitte Chevalier's wines - what it lacks in Faugères typicity/terroir, it certainly makes up for it in it's delightfully soft, sweet-sour, slightly saline fruit aromas and flavours. Aromas of redcurrant, raspberry and white tree fruits combine with all manner of secondary notes, including new leather, smoke, garrigue herbs, dried orange peel and burning incense. Medium-to-full bodied in texture, it is crammed with piquant red fruit and orange flavours, with very fine lapsang tea-like tannins, hints of herbs and exotic spices, saline minerality and juicy, cherry kernel acidity. Although still quite young, it is already beautifully rounded and elegant, with a long finish that keeps you coming back for more. That said, it will undoubtedly age and evolve for a good few years yet. A very fine wine, which lovers of Chateauneuf-du-Pape would do well to try, in order to see what truly elegant Languedoc Grenache tastes like!