2010 Les Cailloux en primeur; 2009 upgraded
"Powerful yet rich, elegant, concentrated wines that have gone from strength to strength since the late 1980s" - Robert Parker's The World's Greatest Wine Estates
It's the magic list of ingredients in Chateauneuf: fantastic terroir, conscientious owners with their own strong ideas and a top class oenologist to help them realise the potential of their land. The late eighties was the time of change for the Brunels and the results laid the foundations for the superb wines we see today. From then most of the fruit was destemmed, and though the Brunels use oak to mature the Syrah and Mourvedre, the Grenache ferments and matures in enamel, well away from the oxygen to which it is so susceptible. And they no longer fine or filter any of the reds, leaving all the flavours in the glass.
Lucien and André Brunel's vineyards are sited mostly on Farguerol and next to Rayas in Pignan, both with plenty of the galets or cailloux pudding stones that are so characteristic of the region. They major on Grenache and though they have some Mourvedre it never dominates. As part of their quest for perfection, since 1998 they've worked with Philippe Cambie, as do some of our other growers, but he is far from being a mere purveyor of recipe oenology and you won't find him in the back of the limo bellowing 'Micro-oxygenate!' into his mobile any time soon. /CW
