GUIDE HACHETTE 2024

• Timéo rouge 2021 **

Timeo, premier-né de la 6éme génération (de vignerons), à l’honneur dans ce 2021 au nez boisé et mentholé. L’élevage pose sa patte sur une matière puissante, jeune, aiguisée par des tannins au grain sérré qui donne une touche d’austérité à l’ensemble. On ne s’en émeut pas, il évoluera avec grâce.

• Naked Syrah 2023**

Naked Syrah ? La syrah « mise à nue », élevée en cuve, au plus prêt du fruit. Fidéles au cépage, les arômes de fruits noirs et d’épices se doublent de violette dans un palais léger, vivace, « desoif », ourlé de tanins granuleux et un rien fermes en finale. Juteux on l’ouvre sur des charcuteries ou une viande rouge grillée.

James Suckling

• Timeo 2021    91/100

Cassis, cherries and warm spices on the nose follow through to a medium body with plush tannins. Rich and generous with lots of fruit and a textured finish. Grenache, syrah, carignan and mourvedre. From biodynamically grown grapes with Demeter certification. Drink or hold.

• Hector et Juliette 2021     90/100

Juicy, pulpy and floral red blend of 85% syrah and 15% grenache. The nose shows notes of spiced cherries, dried wood and incense. It’s medium-bodied with fine tannins. All in control with a silky texture at the center and a fresh, mouthwatering finish with violet undertones. From biodynamically grown grapes with Demeter certification. Drink now.

• 4éme 2022   89/100

A juicy and straightforward blend of syrah, carignan and grenache. On the nose it shows aromas of dark berries, dark plums and mixed spices. Medium-bodied with creamy tannins and texture. Plenty of berry character, with raw chocolate and a linear finish. From biodynamically grown grapes with Demeter certification. Drink now.

Jancis Robinson

Christelle Alias, who runs this domaine with aplomb, had already made contact and delivered samples to me as early as 2016 – so I really should have visited her outfit long ago. When we finally met this livewire 37-year-old properly outside the office manned by her mother, she greeted us a white T-shirt and cutoffs and immediately swept us off in her Mini Moke to tour her vineyards, but not before complaining of their third year of drought which has particularly affected Grenache.

She has travelled in New Zealand and Australia and speaks excellent English but has no formal training as an oenologist, depending on Mérieux for analysis and advice. She’s the fifth generation to grow vines here but it was her father Bernard, a wine broker in the village with a business that is now managed by her sister Laëtitia, who was the first in the family to actually make wine. (Like most Languedoc growers, before then they took the grapes to the local co-op.)

Today the 35-ha (86-acre) domaine is run by her and her husband, who is specifically in charge of their flock of sheep. She thinks they would be better with just 30 hectares and thinks they should convert some of their vineyard to other crops. Currently, five vignerons are trying to get her to buy their vines, however.

From the zone between the RN113 and the motorway she deliberately makes fairly light wines, the product of short macerations, but for wines grown on the mountain she aims for more complex wines with a longer maceration. She told me they are petitioning the INAO to recognise the special character of Alaric wines. Like her colleagues, she makes quite an array of different wines, 15 in her case, both appellation and experimental. She went first for organic certification and is now Demeter-certified for biodynamics.

Rising alcohol levels have, apparenty, been a big subject for the Douzens growers and they have tried to manage climate change as best they could by planting cover crops to offer competition for the vines and to slow ripening.

‘I have this terroir in my blood’, she assured me before pouring the wines reviewed below in the large recuperated upper floor of an old winery. She is far from the only vigneron to feel the Corbières regulations need some amendment, being especially restrictive for the proportion of resilient Carignan allowed. About her own blends, she says, ‘What I say on the website is what I should do. What I tell you is what I have actually done.’

She has in the past sold some wine to Matthew Clark in the UK but has no long-term importer.