Roussillon magic

I've said it so many times that I worry I sound like an old vinyl, needle stuck in a battered groove: Roussillon is magic.

It's a region that defies rules and expectations. It's France's wild west. France's misunderstood and overlooked hinterland. It's a stubborn, antithetical wine region which should be too hot, too dry, too hard to make wine that is anything other than big, hot and hard. The landscape is carved by xeric winds, and the wines should be thus carved into xeric brutality, surely. It's in a corner, on the border, tucked out of sight, the land cracking into dishevelled thirst for rain. An interdict.

And yet, in this liminal space that is neither Spain nor France, a portal from mountain to sea, the wines are mutinously, obstinately, recklessly graceful. They should not be this way. But they almost all are. People are making wines that are confounding: star-bright fruit, crystal-cut acidity and limpid tannins. Wines with freshness and juice-drenched life that curls through the cracks of dry earth. They're my empyrean wines: heavenly, vertical, but also carrying the element of fire.

The gathering of tasting notes below is a special one. It's not all of Roussillon's heroic producers (that would make for a daunting tasting) but I was lucky to receive samples of a few of the best. It's why scores are high and very few of these wines are ordinary. This is a cluster of infrangible people with their fingers on the pulse of a dry, dusty land, carefully nurturing twisted old vines, coaxing the spirit of the wind and the mountains into exquisitely fine fruit, year after year.

Mas Llossanes – Solenn and Dominique Génot farm biodynamically with the help of a horse and make their wines with minimal intervention (spontaneous fermentation, no added sulphites before or during fermentation and ageing) and yet their wines are soaringly clean and heart-breakingly beautiful.

Tamlyn's tasting notes

Mas Llossanes, Pur Chasan 2022 IGP Côtes Catalanes

Full bottle 1,152 g. Certified biodynamic (Demeter), organic (Ecocert). 100% Chasan. Hand-picked from a vineyard at 700 m asl (one of the highest vineyards in France). Aged for 12 months in 60% second-use barrels and 400% stainless steel. A delicate, barely-there aroma of dried chamomile flower. Not as rich as previous vintages but nonetheless carrying kaleidoscopic complexity. The acidity is super-fine and feels as if it's running a silvery matrix through pear and grapefruit flesh flecked with oregano, white pepper, lemongrass. Rumpled satin. A barely-there breath of honey on the end. I'd love to taste a vertical of this wine to see how it ages. It might well age for longer than I've suggested. (TC)

13.5%

Drink 2024-2028 

Mas Llossanes, Là-Haut 2022 IGP Côtes Catalanes

Full bottle 1,313 g. Certified biodynamic (Demeter), organic (Ecocert). 100% Carignan from vines aged 50 to 70 years planted on schist and granite. Spontaneous fermentation in stainless steel. No added sulphites before or during fermentation and ageing.  This is one of the most pure Carignans I have ever tasted. The fruit is singing. It's plashy with red, red juice – like a little Jackson Pollock in a glass. All-over action, dripping with (almost) undisciplined joy. Scribbles of crushed oregano and a tiny tell-tale tang (beautifully integrated) of a wine made with very low added sulphites. Cooled, it was even more scrumptious. This is just so good. So very, very drinkable and delicious. My drinkability score would be a full three-glass, can't-do-better-than-this. VGV (TC)

13.5%

Drink 2024-2026

Mas Llossanes, Pure Syrah 2020 IGP Côtes Catalanes

Full bottle 1,352 g. Certified organic (Ecocert) and certified biodynamic since 2020. 75-year-old vines grown at 650 m on granite. Spontaneous fermentation, low added sulphites. Two years in second-use oak barrels. 1,250 bottles produced. Vanilla, cedar and coconut over blueberry jam on the nose. Milk chocolate and a slow caress of old leather. The high-elevation stone of the wine carves the beginning and end, but the middle has amplitude and a great sweeping curve of fruit. Dramatic but not exaggerated. (TC)

13.5%

Drink

2024-2034

Mas Llossanes, Au Dolmen 2019 IGP Côtes Catalanes

Full bottle 1,344 g. Certified organic (Ecocert). 51% Carignan, 27% Grenache, 22% Syrah. Vines 25 to 75 years old, planted in granitic soil at 650 m and in the third year of biodynamic conversion. Spontaneous fermentation (each variety separately), three to four weeks of skin maceration and ageing for 18 months. So peppery! Vibrant and vivid and popping with pepper and lavender and cherry fruit that segues from sour fresh to pie-sweet dried. The energy in this wine is infectious, as is its generosity, veined with herbal freshness. The tannins have the crack snap of a whip and the bend and stretch of a rubber band. It has quench and scarlet splash and everything you want from a wine when it's going with a table full of sun-lit, garden-picked, bright-coloured food. Yes please. The world would be a better place with more wines like this one. GV (TC)

13.5%

Drink

2024-2028

Mas Llossanes, Dotrera 2019 Côtes du Roussillon

Full bottle 1,344 g. Certified organic (Ecocert). Mostly Grenache and Carignan with a small percentage of Syrah and Chenanson. Hand-picked. Cold maceration followed by spontaneous fermentation – three weeks' total maceration. The Grenache is aged in stainless steel, the other three varieties spend a year in second-use oak barriques. The wines are blended three or four months before bottling. A flood of dark-berry sweetness that, even as it fills every nook and cranny, cannot subsume the pepper spiciness, cold-old-flagstones minerality and crushed-lavender fragrance of Roussillon and these vineyards. And, as it seems with every vintage of Dotrera, there is something about the soul of this wine that comes from deep underground – a loam-rich, mycorrhizal, truffle-scented glory. Velvet tannins. Glowing with life. A beauty. (TC)

14%

Drink

2024-2034

Mas Llossanes, Poc a Poc NV Vin de Liqueur

Full bottle 1,124 g. Certified organic (Ecocert). 100% Grenache. A spicy, sweetly wooded red wine that is yet so very different from port – gentle embers of warmth rather than fire. Chai-soaked plums, raspberry jam, cinnamon-woodsy tannins and then this oh-so-calming pool of cool-brewed jasmine tea. Complex, long and elegant. (TC)

17%

Drink 2024-2040