Wines

L'Ermitage du Pic Saint Loup
Guilhem Gaucelm 2006

AOC Pic-Saint-Loup

One of the great icon wines of Languedoc, the Guilhem Gaucelm is made from roughly equal proportions of old vines Grenache and Syrah grown on the southern flank of the Pic Saint Loup mountain.

An amazing bottle of wine already, despite having several years of potential improvement ahead of it. It is packed with complex fruit flavours like black currant, raspberry, tayberry, red currant, and has begun to develop some lovely game and gravy notes. All this is backed up with some lovely oriental and sweet spices and fantastic silky tannins and a developing length that goes on and on and on. It is truly a great wine.

Maturity: despite being lovely to drink now, it will improve over at least five more years, and then drink at peak for perhaps another ten.

Food: Perfect for richer dark meat dishes, perhaps a roast rib of beef, or venison in a prune and chocolate sauce, Tournedos Rossini, or Boeuf-en-croute. It is more difficult to match to vegetarian food, but it will be superb with some stronger cow’s milk cheeses.

Alcohol: 14% (though it does not show as the wine is so well balanced)

Varieties: 50% Grenache Noir (vines over 80 years old)
50% Syrah (vines over 40 years old)

Yields: 10 – 20 hl/ha

Viticulture

The Syrah vines are approximately 40 years old, trained cordon de royat; they are grown on limestone with a little clay and many large river stones to a depth of 6m. The Grenache vines are all over 80 years old and trained as goblet.

Vinification:

Hand picked grapes are sorted and destemed with the Grenache and Syrah co-fermented in a wide stainless steel cuve
2 – 3 days cold maceration is followed by 21+ days fermentation at 26 – 28 degrees, with pigeage one to four times a day, dependent on the speed of fermentation, the level of extraction, the development of the wine and with respect to the lunar cycles
Aged in oak barriques, of which 20% are new, for 21 months before bottling
Less than 2400 bottles were produced in 2006

Biodynamic principles are followed in all aspects of the work in the vineyards and cellar on this domain.