And the first 100% organic village for agriculture is Correns, in the inland from the Azur coast between Nice and Marseille.
Much has been said about this property and its affinity to artists throughout the years. Briefly: In 1970 jazz pianist Jacques Loussier used it as a recording studio. (Parts of Pink Floyd’s The Wall are recorded here.) Today it’s owned by actors Jolie & Pitt, and the wine is made by Perrin, the family behind many outstanding wines like Beaucastel.
Covering 500 hectares of land in the Côte de Provence, the wine château is only a small part of this, together with olive groves, woods and wildlife. The vineyards are located around 350 meters above sea level, partly terraced, on clay and limestone soils. The temperature varies a great deal between day and night, given a nice freshness to most of the wines.
This rosé is made mainly from the cinsault grape, with some grenache, syrah and rolle. Rolle? Well, this is quite complicated: Rolle is a synonym for a local grape named rollo. It’s also a synonym for the better known Italian vermentino. It can even be that the two are related…
Most of the grapes are lightly pressed directly. But some of the syrah are made according to the “saignée” method, which means that part of the juice is removed from the must to concentrate phenolics and other components. (Needless to say, it’s not an ideal practice with “naturalists”.) The fermentation was mostly in stainless steel, with a small part (around 5%) in oak, with some batonnage.
Miraval Rosé 2015 (Ch. Miraval)
Pale pink. Delicate aromas of citrus, raspberries and white flowers, and a touch of pepper. Quite fresh on the palate, some volume too and a nice concentration that makes it persistent, with a dryness and a touch of a salty minerality in the finish. I find that many of the rosés in the area have too much alcohol for the body and concentration. This one not.
Price: Low
Food: Salads, fowl, fish and seafood