🌍 Collioure, Languedoc-Roussillon, France
🍇 Grenache gris 90%, grenache blanc 10%
Direct fermentation in barrels, ageing 8 months on lees, stirring every day during fermentation and once a week until December, bottled in the spring.
Roussillon white wines may only account for a small part of the production of the region, but they are truly worth seeking out, for their minerality and depth of flavour. Collioure has gained plaudits over the last few decades for the quality of its white wines, but one should not forget that red grapes are still more planted here and that not too long ago they would all have gone into Banyuls.
La Rectorie covers about 27 ha/70 acres, in as many different sites, making mainly red Collioure and increasingly a flavoursome white and famously deep-coloured rosé.
The Parcé brothers Marc, Pierre and Thierry have built up this old family estate into something approaching cult, although they wouldn’t like that nomenclature. Marc in particular, as president of the Collioure growers association and a countrywide lobby group called Sève, is very committed to shaping the appellation’s future and promoting it beyond the region.
👀 Greenish yellow colour
👃The medium and complex nose evokes empyreumatic, spicy, floral, fruity and mineral notes.
👄In the mouth is dry, lightly toasty and spicy vs apricot and peach aromas; tighter and more “mineral/salty” in the mouth vs rounded and slightly creamy, juicy pineapple too and quite subtle finish despite its fair weight.
