Domaine Romaneaux-Destezet (Hervé Souhaut) Saint-Joseph "Sainte Epine" 2020
About the wine:
The Saint Epine vineyard is located right behind Hervé and Beatrice Souhaut’s house in the village of Tourney. It lies on an extremely steep slope that is terraced with old rock walls.
Age of Vines: 100 (plus!) year-old non-cloned vines
Yields: 25 hl/ha 1,500 bottles annually
Pruning Method: Gobelet
Soil: Schist
Varieties: Syrah
Vinification Method: Grapes are hand-harvested and undergo a very long maceration at a low temperature—without de-stemming. The wine is fermented in wooden tanks and aged on fine lees in second-hand oak casks. The wine is bottled without filtration. The wine has a total SO2 of only 25mg/L.
Tasting Note: The nose shows an explosion of spices, with notes of orange, anise and violets also being present. Baking spices carry on to a mineral-based palate where they meet red cherries and a big dose of black pepper. Great acidity gives the wine plenty of lift and leads to a long mineral and pepper finish.
Pairing: Lamb shoulder, prime rib or a porterhouse steak.
About the producer:
Hervé Souhaut created Domaine Romaneaux-Destezet in 1993. Hervé works 5-hectares of old and ancient vines—between 50 to 100 years old. He is very fortunate to own two vineyards in the Rhône Valley just opposite the storied hills of Hermitage in Saint Joseph. This region is widely recognized as being one of the finest areas for wine production on the planet; thanks in part to its elevation, ancient vineyard sites, and southeastern and southern exposures. The domaine is located further into the hills of the Northern Ardeche in the tiny town of Arlebosc, about a 30-minute drive, winding through the hills from St Joseph. The winery is underneath the 16th century “les romaneaux” fortified farm and sits in the middle of the vines that make up the Souteronne, Syrah, and white cuvées.
Hervé works entirely on whole grape bunches and semi-carbonic maceration. His philosophy is to extract a delicate balance of tannins from the grapes, to make a wine with subtlety and finesse. This stands in contrast to many of the storied wines of the Northern Rhone that are made with much more extraction of tannin, where they are designed to be practically undrinkable in their youth, as time is needed for them to soften and open up. Hervé prefers to make a wine that is drinkable right away, but we must say his wines have such a fantastic level of purity and acidity, that the older bottles we have tasted have incredible potential to evolve into what we find to be one of the most spectacular natural wines in existence.