Hervé Souhaut
Domaine Romaneaux-Destezet, Hervé Souhaut "La Souteronne" Saint-Joseph, Rhône Valley, France 2022
Domaine Romaneaux-Destezet, Hervé Souhaut "La Souteronne" Saint-Joseph, Rhône Valley, France 2022
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If you smashed dark, ripe plums against a slab of cool granite and then licked it while summer rain poured down, you can imagine the sultry romance of this wine. A perpetual stunner, it remains one of our favorite wines on the shelves. Ageable gamay that is a far cry from its poppy, carefree cousins in Beaujolais.
FROM JENNY & FRANÇOIS
THE WINE: 100% Gamay. Vineyard: 50 to 80 years old non-clone vines on granite. A blend of grapes from 8 sites (4 hectares in total) in the communes of Arlebosc, Empurany and Colombier le Vieux, in the Vallée du Doux, all estate-owned.
Vinification Method: Grapes are hand-harvested and sorted in the vineyard. They then undergo a very long maceration at a low temperature—without de-stemming, as whole bunches. Once pressed, the wine is aged on fine lees in secondhand oak casks and stainless steel tanks. The wine is bottled without filtration or fining, with 25 mg/L of SO2.
Tasting Note: Nearly purple in the glass with a garnet rim. The nose is an enticing array of strawberry, black cherry, plum, fig paste, smoky herbs and pounded stones. Buoyant black fruit dominates the palate and is followed by pretty red berry tones, and minerality. The granite soil evokes something very familiar and Beaujolais-like, while cloaked under the influence of the Northern Rhone, suggesting the more dark and bacon-y tendencies of Syrah from this area.
THE PRODUCER: Hervé Souhaut created Domaine Romaneaux-Destezet in 1993. Hervé works 5-hectares of old and ancient vines—between 50 to 100 years old. He is very fortunate to own two vineyards in the Rhône Valley just opposite the storied hills of Hermitage in Saint Joseph. This region is widely recognized as being one of the finest areas for wine production on the planet; thanks in part to its elevation, ancient vineyard sites, and southeastern and southern exposures. The domaine is located further into the hills of the Northern Ardeche in the tiny town of Arlebosc, about a 30-minute drive, winding through the hills from St Joseph. The winery is underneath the 16th century “les romaneaux” fortified farm and sits in the middle of the vines that make up the Souteronne, Syrah, and white cuvées.
Hervé works entirely on whole grape bunches and semi-carbonic maceration. His philosophy is to extract a delicate balance of tannins from the grapes, to make a wine with subtlety and finesse. This stands in contrast to many of the storied wines of the Northern Rhone that are made with much more extraction of tannin, where they are designed to be practically undrinkable in their youth, as time is needed for them to soften and open up. Hervé prefers to make a wine that is drinkable right away, but we must say his wines have such a fantastic level of purity and acidity, that the older bottles we have tasted have incredible potential to evolve into what we find to be one of the most spectacular natural wines in existence.
Starting in 2015, Hervé started a new side project called Les Marécos, which we are proud to also represent. Hervé’s neighbor Michel Savel, a lover of wine, decided to replant some of his hillsides vine to what they were a long time ago. He entrusted the management of the vines and the vinification of the wines to Hervé.
