2015 Domaine Courier Cotes Catalanes Languedoc-Roussillon

The year was 2006. The small southern French town of Maury, once famed for its dessert wines, was in the midst of a land-consolidation project. With sales for sweet wines waning, the local government decided to pay winemakers to uproot their oldest vineyards and plant orchards instead, which were more lucrative.

Importer Kimberly Jones—a close friend of ours and one of the top brokers of Napa Valley’s finest bottles—was visiting at the time. She fell in love with the countryside and its wines, and when she got wind of the land-consolidation plan, she snapped up 14 acres of century-old vines before they could be destroyed. She knew viticultural treasures like these were too special and rare to be erased.

Maury experiences some of the hottest, driest conditions in the country, and the flaky, harsh, schist soil is as unforgiving as the climate. Yet such merciless conditions are exactly what pushes Grenache to its transcendent best—and Kimberly’s 2015 Courier Cotes Catalanes is proof. 

“This is the transmission, the expression of those rescued vines,” Kimberly told us, as she filled our glass with the inky red wine. “That’s why it’s called ‘Courier.’” She told us the tale as we sat around a firepit at her house in the California desert, underneath a blanket of stars. We were riveted by the story—but even more by the wine. 

The septuagenarian and centenarian vines give infinitesimal yields, topping out at an “insanely low” (Dunnuck) quarter-ton per acre. So while this is a beast of a wine, there isn’t much of it. We only have a few cases, so make sure you move fast to bring home some of Roussillon at its best.

• Fruit Intensity
• Oak Intensity
• Body
• Acidity
• Tannin

• ABV 15.00%
• 30 mins
• Drink Up
• 70% Grenache30% Carignan
• Serving temperature – 58°
• Cork