- Description
- *This is our rare, single-vineyard wine, which is only produced in the best years. This year, only 665 bottles were made.
- Eyes
- Les Genoux is less intensely coloured than the regular cuveé, as it contains 10-15% white and pink grapes.
- Nose
- This year's Les Genoux is a bigger, riper style than the last couple of vintages, but still only clocks in at just over 13.5%. It is incredibly enticing, and the whole-bunch component adds freshness and a peppery bite to a core of extremely expressive wild strawberry and sweet liquorice fennel.
- Mouth
- Quite a punchy front palate with plenty of red fruits like strawberries and red fruit pastilles. There are gentle oak-derived vanillas, and subtle barrel seasoning accompanied by a rich, ripe, yet elegant Grenache palate picking up the wild strawberry theme and adding notes of orange peel, rosemary and fennel. A richer Les Genoux, but with a bright and persistent finish, and finely grained tannins.
- Body
- medium
- Winemaking notes
- The source of the fruit for our 'Les Genoux' cuveé are the wonderful 100+ year-old vines in our ancient Coume de Roy vineyard. All the grapes are picked by hand, and any selection needed to eliminate less than perfect grapes is done in the vineyard. This year we ended up with three demi-muids (500 L barrels) up-ended with the ends taken out. Two of them were filled with whole bunches, crushed under-foot, and plunged gently by hand, twice or three times a day, during the fermentation. At pressing, the wine was drained into one 500L Seguin Moreau 'Icone' barrel, and the pressings blended with other Grenache pressings in another 225L barrel. After 15 months of ageing, we bottled our 500L barrel as 'Les Genoux', returning our pressings barrel to the main Domaine of the Bee blend.
- Growing Conditions
- An EXTREMELY cold January, with rare snow lying on the ground (briefly) marked the start of a year that was incredibly dry. Very low rainfall in a cool spring, and then a nice mini heatwave in June, but still very little rain. Two more heat spikes in mid July and late August, followed by September rains which finally allowed the vines a little moisture, and helped to swell the thick-skinned grapes. Most of the vineyards for our white and rosé were harvested before the rain, and most of our reds in a dry spell after the rainy spells. A good year for white and pinks, and a GREAT year for reds.
