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About the wine
Muscular Northern Rhône-style Syrah from the Bonneton’s prized vineyard, where vines planted as far back as the 1940s cling to steep, south-facing terraces that look down to the river Doux, one of the Rhône’s western tributaries. The very oldest vines here are specifically Sérine, a thick-skinned, tightly-clustered clone of Syrah that is principally associated with nearby Côte-Rôtie. The soils here are the same decomposed granite (referred to locally as ‘gore’) one might find in the coveted Cornas AOC, but with a different aspect, sitting atop the valley to the west at around 600 metres altitude. The cooler nights bring a freshness and perfume to the wine that reflects this outlying terroir. Manual work is the only possibility here and, despite the vertiginous slopes, Remi is still working the soil by horse and plow.
Whole bunches are crushed by foot and left to macerate for a couple of weeks before being pressed into a mixture of old demi-muid barrels and amphora to age for one year, before bottling in the summer of 2023 with no additions at all. Deep, sumptuous blackcurrant fruit, black olive tapenade and toasted cacao with the kind of bold, fine-grained tannins you’d expect in this style of wine. After a couple of years in the bottle its drinking window is now starting to open. That said, it’s a bottle we also feel could happily sleep in the cellar for many years to come.
About Patricia & Rémi Bonneton
Rémi Bonneton started working the vineyards of the Northern Rhône in the early 2000s, not tending vines or harvesting grapes, but working with his two horses, Suspens and Palynka, offering his unique services to plough the soils at some of the most coveted domaines in this part of France. After making a little of his own wine along the way, cut to 2013 when he and his wife Patricia found their very first vineyard parcel of old-vine Syrah on the steep slopes of the Doux Valley, right at the very northern tip of the Ardèche. Despite the sheer terracing the land is worked à la Bonneton: by horse and plough. It’s physical, demanding work and no light undertaking - perfect for Rémi who in his previous life was a professional rower. This domaine totals just under 2 hectares and includes another parcel close to Tournon Sur Rhône planted with Roussanne and Marsanne on a hill over the border in the Northern Rhône, sitting opposite the iconic vineyards of Cornas and Saint-Joseph. The vines at both sites see no chemical treatments and this approach is followed into the cellar where the wines ferment spontaneously and have nothing added. The 3000 or so bottles of wine produced each year from these vineyards is bottled as L’Alezan. This small surface of their own means that 90% of Patricia & Remi's annual output is through their négociant label, La Tangente. Some cuvées are repeated and carefully honed each year, seeking that perfect expression. Others embrace the spirit of creativity and are either a variation on a previous vintage or a completely new wine altogether. Everything is made in the mixture of cuve, demi-muid, foudre and clay amphora (specifically ‘tinaja’, imported from Spain) that live in the cellar beneath their house. They work with a network of friends and growers in other parts of France (mainly the Southern Rhône, Languedoc & Beaujolais) and buy in a dizzying amount of fruit - travelling with their harvest teams to pick the grapes themselves before transporting them back home to Étables. The logistical feat is highly impressive, and once one considers the finite amount of space in a cellar to press the fruit and make the wine, along with the art of harvesting fruit from multiple locations at exactly the right moment, the number of moving parts starts to inspire a feeling of vertigo. Patricia & Remi thrive under this pressure, and we believe that the way they push themselves each year is exactly why their wines are such a thrill to drink. Combined with their passionate stance against any additions being used in the wine whatsoever, they are an expression of personality like none we have tried before.