Vital, high-energy Syrah a la Mazel. The blackcurrant and black olive flavours entwine to create something deeply savoury and saline. Find out more.
About the Wine
Those who have had the experience know that, whilst humbly priced, Mazel wines age with aplomb. We're happy to offer a small quantity of the above Syrah cuvee with well over a decade under its belt. Here we start to see the youthful fruit fall away into something more chiseled and defined.
As with more recent vintages Larmande is 100% Syrah, fermented in carbonic maceration as whole bunches. The main point of intrigue here is that 2011 marks the final vintage that the wine would be transferred from steel tanks with a portion left to rest in old oak for a couple of years. Developed flavours are now appearing in the wine, but the captivating thing is that the taut acids do not seem to have dropped a notch. A bit like seeing a teenaged face slowly develop the features of an adult, this is a wonderful example of the potential these wines hold. To drink now, with experience telling us that it could easily see another decade in the cellar.
About Le Mazel
Gérald Oustric is one of a certain generation of winemakers whom experienced a shared epiphany after meeting with Marcel Lapierre during the 80s. At the time he was working the family vineyards in Valvignères, a village in the south of the Ardèche, alongside his father. Each vintage all of the fruit was sold to the local co-operative. It was after this fateful meeting with Lapierre that Gerald realised there was another way to tend the vines and turn the resulting grapes into wine, and by the late 90s he had pulled out of the co-op, converted the domaine to certified organic and, in the wake of the infamous ‘gang of four’ that had inspired him, began to realise his vision of making wine with no additions at all. He joined forces with his sister Jocelyne, and Le Mazel was born.
Over 20 years later they now farm 19 hectares, with a portion leased out to any number of the other emergent winemakers in the region. Gérald is well-regarded for being the guiding force in helping many of these younger producers get set up by selling them grapes, loaning out vineyards, lending them equipment or letting them make their wine in his cellars. There is a healthy, collaborative spirit in the air around these parts but, ever-humble, Gérald's work is often seen after the likes of Anders Frederik Steen, Sylvain Bock, Daniel Sage and Andrea Calek, all of whom he has lent a helping hand to along the way.
The wines themselves are vital, wild-edged and nourishing, and clearly speak of the mistral-swept valley from which they hail. Mazel are notorious for embracing the annual variations that can occur when making wine without heavy manipulations or additions, and as such his staple of regular cuvées can express themselves completely differently from year to year. Each vintage is a new part of a bigger story.
