£81.50
The signature cuvée from a 350-metre plot in the garrigue - a Syrah and Grenache red wine from the Hérault that stays at 13.5%.
It opens on flowers, which is not how most big southern reds introduce themselves - hibiscus and red peony, then wild strawberry and morello cherry underneath. Garnet with ruby at the rim. The palate is concentrated and the tannins are fine and well-knit, and running through all of it is a freshness that lifts the whole wine off the ground, with rosemary and thyme drifting across the finish from the scrub the vines grow in. Intensity without heaviness, and only 13.5% of alcohol doing it. A wine to sit down with.
Top food pairings:
"Mala Coste is a place name - the rough slope the fruit comes off, up at 350 metres in the middle of the scrubland, facing north-west in a valley with its own microclimate. That exposure is why a red this concentrated comes in at 13.5% and still tastes cool. It's a big and very drinkable wine."
Domaine de la Dourbie was created in 1781 and modernised by the Serin family after they bought it in 2003. Organic since 2009. Their twelve hectares up in the Rouveyrolles valley at Vendémian sit between 300 and 350 metres, ringed by garrigue, and this is the wine that comes off them. Bernard Serin and his son Nicolas run the estate; the brand was rebuilt over three years following the death of Emmanuel Serin, who drove both the modernisation and the organic conversion.
Altitude is what makes this Languedoc red wine work - concentration and lift in the same mouthful, at an alcohol level most wines this intense cannot manage. The estate's signature bottle, and the one to open with a long Sunday lunch.
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