The 2006 Coteaux du Languedoc Pic Saint-Loup Metairies du Clos Vieilles Vignes fills the nose and palate with griotte cherries, black raspberry, purple plum, black tea, cardamom, pepper, and a pungent, medicinal amalgam of iodine and herbal concentrate. Sumptuously rich and enveloping, this displays more sheer sweetness of fruit if less underlying sense of density and less vivacity than its 2007 counterpart. Certainly the structure here is superbly fine-grained and the wine’s bitter-sweet, mineral inflected finish truly palate-staining. There is promise here of 8-10 years of fascinating cellar evolution, and one suspects that a protracted period of shut-down might precede the return of generosity and the full revelation of its potential. Christophe Peyrus and Francois Julien had only recently assembled the majority of their 2007 reds when I tasted with them in December, and that collection is as exciting as past experience with Clos Marie and recognition of the potential of this vintage would lead one to expect. “Ripeness came early and homogeneously,” says owner-winemaker Peyrus. “The harvest was very rapid, and the evolution of the wines has been precocious.” Yet even under these conditions, potential alcohol seldom exceeded 14.5% even for the blocks of Grenache, a circumstance Peyrus attributes to his biodynamic methods of cultivation. He is also a partisan of vendange entier (the inclusion of whole clusters in red wine fermentation – in his case generally at least 50%) and says the stems were thoroughly ripe (i.e. lignified) in 2007. It’s a measure of the excitement that within fifteen years, this estate has ascended from obscurity to the top echelon of French wine addresses. There is never a lot of new wood in this dripping-wet cellar, although much of what there is, interestingly, comes from Austrian barrel-maker Franz Stockinger. (The 2007 reds had never been sulfured when I tasted them – that happens here only at bottling, and then only very judiciously.)Imported by Weygandt-Metzler, Unionville, PA; tel. (610) 486-0800 and Beaune Imports, Berkeley, CA; tel. (510) 559 1040
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