Alcohol: 13%
Grape(s): 100% Grenache
Localization: Languedoc, France
Tasting Notes: This is the most aromatic Grenache of the line up right now, with heady red and purple flower, pink peppercorn-strawberry jam, vine peach, darjeeling tea and much more. On the palate, consider it a Beaujolais of the south. You pick up some aromas from the carbonic maceration - strawberry, a little varnish - but then it is all about rhubarb marmalade, tangerine zest, dates, Mediterranean spices. It is tarter and a little dirtier on the finish, but over a week the palate cleaned and softened up. The tannins are ripe and gentle.
Notes: Les Foulards Rouges "Glaneurs" comes from a single vineyard planted in 1970. It is 100% Grenache grown on the decomposed granite hillside, giving yields of 15 hl/ha. The name is a tribute to a French documentary made by Agnès Varda,"Les Glaneurs et la Glaneuse" ("The Gleanears and I" in the US.) Hand-harvested, the grapes are chilled on arrival, then vinified 50% de-stemmed, 50% in whole-cluster carbonic, both macerated for 3 weeks with wild yeasts. The free run and press juices are blended, then the wine is aged for 6 months in used barels before being bottled by hand without any fining, filtration or SO2.
Food Pairing: Keep it 2-3 years or enjoy today slightly chilled in a medium-sized glass with a beet, arugula and hazelnut salad with raspberry vinegar dressing or a black lentils stew with Lebanese spices.
The Domain: For 12 years, Jean-François Nicq worked as a winemaker in the Côtes du Rhône. On the first of January 2001, Jean-François joined his childhood friend, Bijan Mohamadi (who had been spending his days as a math teacher like our friend Cyrill Sevin) to start a new domaine at the very southern end of the Languedoc. "The Red Scarves" is a literary reference to the works of Fréderic Fajardie, whom the men greatly admired. Their philosophy is in turn a militaristic one, completely against intervention in the vines or the cellar. Native yeasts, no fining, filtration, added sulfur, and even some tillage with the help of their mule, Uma: The real deal. The vineyards are composed of multiple plots, on the lower, flatter part are mostly decomposed sandier soil. On the hillside, 100 meters up, are isolated single plots: Frida, Les Vilains, Les Glaneurs, Grenache. They lie directly on the bedrock with barely any topsoil and show more density.
