Domaine Rouge Garance
Cotes du Rhone-Villages
Southern Rhone, France
Domaine Rouge Garance is one of the finest of the new wave of producers of Cotes du Rhone who started in the 1990s. The Domaine is owned by French film legend Jean-Louis Trintignant and Bertrand and Claudie Cortellini. Trintignant became a superstar through Cannes Film Festival top prize winning film A Man and A Woman in the 1960s. The Cortellinis are a husband and wife team who have farmed a small wine estate since 1977 and were part of well known local cooperative Esterzargues. The three met in the 1980s, and got on so well – over wine and the arts generally - that they decided to found their own estate.
1997, they founded Domaine Rouge Garance and launched their first wines. The labels were designed by famous graphic artist Enki Bilal and by 1999 the modern, simple and effective winery had been fully built to manage the production of 6 different wines from an estate of 29 hectares.
The estate is located in the far south west of the Southern Rhone region, to the west of the Rhone river and Chateauneuf, in the department of the Gard. Some of the vineyards have a view over the historic Pont du Gard. The wines are AOC Cotes du Rhone and Cotes du Rhone Villages.
The vines are aged between 5 and 80 years old, grown on clay limestone soils and are cultivated organically as the owners are committed to making the most natural possible expression of fruit from their soils. They are also part of a group of vignerons which include luminaries such as L’Oratoire St Martin and Marcel Richaud of Cairanne, Les Amouriers of Vacqueryas and Bois de Boursan of Chateauneuf, who search to work as naturally possible and share information about their work in the vineyard and cellar.
In the cellar, they work simply, with no additives apart from low and sensible levels of SO2 to preserve and the purity and freshness of their fruit.
The style of wine at Rouge Garance is elegant, refreshing, pure and complex. The two wines imported show different sides of this character. Garances is silky and juicy, Rouge Garance is much more structured with power and greater complexity.
