Charvin Vin de Pays de la Principaute d'Orange "VOISIN" 2008   

download pdf

About

This Merlot Grenache blend is Laurent Charvin’s entry level wine and thus a good opportunity to drink Charvin for a gentle price.  The Voisin label is produced exclusively for The Vine Ltd.  The name means ‘neighbour’ and refers to the fact that Vine owner James’ house in Vacqueyras makes him a neighbour of Charvin.

Tasting notes

Brilliant vintage for this wine, lending the wine silky tannins and uplifting acidity perfectly harmonising the sweet, perfumed fruit character of plum, strawberry, white pepper and capsicum.

Vintage Notes

2008 Southern Rhones are very good, wonderfully refreshing, relatively light, airy and juicy – especially by comparison with the almost overwhelming opulence of 2007.  Spring and summer were marked by cool and damp conditions but fine weather and mistral in September enabled ripening to good maturity.  With a lot of hard work and strict selection, the best vignerons made wines where the pleasure factor – as opposed to the wow factor – is high.

Grapes

50% Grenache, 50% Merlot

Vine age

35 to 65 year old Grenache, 11 year old Merlot

Vineyards

From just outside the Chateauneuf and Cotes du Rhone appellation, on flat sandy and clay limestone soils.  The vines are cultivated as assiduously as the Chateauneuf and Cotes du Rhone plantings, ploughed and no synthetic or chemical products are used.  All vines are wire trained.

Yield

60 hl/ha

Harvest

Hand harvested in early September

Winemaking

The wine making is utterly simple and non-interventionist using wild yeasts in concrete tank in exactly the same way as the Chateauneuf and Cotes du Rhone; with extraction carried out very gently by a daily remontage during fermentation.  The varieties were fermented separately and then blended after the malolactic finished 6 months later.  This whole approach ensured maximum finesse of the fruit.

Maturation

18 months in concrete tank

Bottling

Unfiltered and unfined. Bottled February 2010; 900 bottles (75 cases) of this label, for Japan exclusively.