In keeping with the vintage, 2023 sees an abundance of blackcurrant fruit right upfront, giving way to those typically herb-flecked liquorice notes, fennel and clove. Find out more.
About the Wine
Magnum bottling! It gives us a lot of pleasure to put the Oustric’s new cuvée, Paulou, into the mix. Younger vines than the other reds, from a fairly recent planting of Cinsault which has been used in an experimental sparkling wine up to this point. Now mature enough to make a wine in its own right, we have something bursting with vigour and those typically herbal red fruits on our hands.
Put through the usual carbo treatment for 10 days as whole bunches, it shows an attractive ruby in the glass and aromas subtly give off that dusty spice typical of the grape. Crackling with a bright, nervy energy, the fruits have a pleasing balance of tart raspberry and softer, rounded plum. There is something iron-like and bloody at the core and, much like Raoul this year, the mineral imprint of the limestone can be felt distinctly in the finish. A success!
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.
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