[轉載]La Lagune and Paul Jaboulet to launch new cross-regional blend

fatloong · 發表於 2014-5-22 07:37:08

Third growth Château La Lagune and Paul Jaboulet go back to the future with a new cross-regional blend.

In a throwback to late 18th-Century France, Bordeaux’s Château La Lagune and the Rhône’s Paul Jaboulet have launched a new 50/50 blend combining wines from the two regions.

Syrah from Hermitage in the northern Rhône was often blended with Bordeaux wines in the late 18th and early 19th Centuries to bolster the color and structure of claret, particularly in cooler years. “The Lafitte of 1795, which was made up with Hermitage, was the best-liked wine of any of that year,” wrote Bordeaux wine merchant Nathaniel Johnson in the early 1800s.

Appellation regulations put an end to cross-country blending but now the tradition is being revived by La Lagune, which also owns Domaine Paul Jaboulet. The 2010 Evidence is the brainchild of winemaker Caroline Frey, and it has just been released.

Frey told Wine-Searcher: “The idea came quite naturally as I travel between La Lagune and Jaboulet each week.

“We know that the blend works well because we have already the same kind of blend in other countries [such as Australia] and the idea of Evidence is that the Cabernet comes from Bordeaux and the Syrah from the Rhône.”

Rhone Bordeaux blend
There are 10,000 bottles of the inaugural vintage, which will sell for 30 euros a bottle in wine stores in France.

“It’s amazing: some days it tastes more Syrah and other days it’s more Cabernet Sauvignon. You get the power of the Syrah and the elegance of the Cabernet Sauvignon,” said Frey.

The fruit comes from vineyards used to produce La Lagune’s second wine, Le Moulin de Lagune, and Jaboulet-owned Domaine de Thalabert's Crozes-Hermitage vineyards. The finished wine cannot bear an appellation; it is a vin de France, the category formerly known as vin de table.

The wines are fermented separately in their respective regions and aged for one year in barrel. The Cabernet portion of the wine is then transported to the Rhône Valley, where Frey blends it with the Syrah. The final blend is then aged for 18 months in 15 percent new oak before being bottled.

This isn’t Frey’s first attempt at a Rhône-Bordeaux blend. She first made one barrel of wine, blending La Lagune and Jaboulet’s Hermitage La Chapelle, in 2006 to produce Duo. Six magnums of the limited-edition wine fetched HK$24,500 ($3160) at auction in 2013.

“People really liked the wine, so we decided to produce Evidence so we could offer a greater quantity at at a lower price," added Frey.

Fellow third growth Château Palmer has also produced an experimental Bordeaux-Hermitage blend on a number of occasions. The “Historical XIXth Century Wine” is a blend of Merlot, Cabernet and 12-15 percent northern Rhône Syrah.

In the first half of the 19th Century there were actually small amounts of Syrah planted in Bordeaux, including some in the vineyards of Cos d’Estournel, Lafite and Latour.

Note from fatloong
(1) Back in the 18th century, climate is much cooler, and the Cab in Bordeaux could have problem ripening well.
(2) They managed to make 1+1=3. Both the Le Moulin de Lagune and Domaine de Thalabert sell for less than 30 Euro. This is just like Stag Leap's Cask 23
(3) Another example of old world moving more new world: a cab-shiraz from France