Magnum bottling. Vivid ruby Carignan and another delightfully light, luminous vintage, already to drinking superbly in its youth. From 50 year-old vines planted over limestone and clay, the grapes undergo a ten-day carbonic maceration before being slowly pressed off (using the big old manual wooden press Gérald bought from Yvon Métras) into steel for 7 months before bottling with no additions.
It's another wine from the early-released 2023 vintage that perfectly displays the youthful verve that the Oustrics saw the potential to harness. Fruit is freshly crushed black and red cherry with a herbal lilt of wild fennel garrigue and light balsamic twang, towards a lovely sense of limestone minerals in the finish. Truly compelling wine, in the sense that once opened a bottle does not last for long! One to lightly chill to get it at its best.
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.
