Les Genoux 2022
- Retail
- £50.00
- Member
- £40.00
- Case
- £300.00
- Case (Member)
- £240.00
- Varieties
- Grenache Noir, Carignan, Grenache Gris, Grenache Blanc
- Vintage
- 2022
- Country
- France
- Region
- Roussillon
- Alcohol
- 13%
- Bottle Size
- 750ml
- Drinking Window
- 2024 - 2033
- Description
- *This is our rare, single-vineyard wine, which is only produced in the best years. This year, only 1250 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 delicate, poised wine with ethereal pure red fruit and herbs on the nose. In spite of being Grenache grown in the hottest part of France, it still only clocks in at just over 13.0%. 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 six demi-muids (500 L barrels) up-ended with the ends taken out. Three 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 500L barrels, with the 'whole bunch' fruit going to our Seguin Moreau 'Icone' barrel, and the next best fermentations into a 2-year old Icone barrel. After 15 months of ageing, we bottled our 1000L as 'Les Genoux', possibly the finest we have made to date.
- Growing Conditions
- The Winter of 2021/22 was uncharacteristically dry, with 'normal' rain in April and May giving the vines enough moisture to commence the season's growth, and the lovely dry period during flowering in late May / June ensure the 'sortie' (successful flowering) was excellent, with LOADS of bunches. There then followed an exceptionally dry July and August which had us fearing that the vines would stop ripening, and that the grapes would just shrivel. Some relieving light rain in September kept the vines respiring, and we managed to harvest a good crop of plentiful bunches with very small grapes - with exceptional flavours. The Coume de Roy block gave its BEST EVER yield of about 3.5 Tonnes.
Reviews
Jamie Goode
https://wineanorak.com/2024/08/23/domaine-of-the-bee-interesting-wines-from-the-roussillon/August 23, 2024
94/100 "The last ever vintage of the wine from 100+-year-old vines which have now been ripped out. It’s a blend of Grenache Noir and Carignan with small contributions from Grenache Gris and Grenache Blanc. Fermented in 6 upturned 500 litre barrels, with three being whole-bunch ferments. Fine, fresh and vivid with some wild herb and tea detail to the punchy red berry fruits. This has some cranberry in the mix, with a sweet core of red cherry, and then the bass comes from a touch of oak spice. Very stylish and quite elegant, but not lacking in power."
Tamlyn Currin - www.jancisrobinson.com
https://www.jancisrobinson.com/tastings?search-full=%22Domaine+of+the+Bee%22July 22, 2024
18/20 "While Les Genoux has the same succulent sweetness of fruit as Bee's Maury Sec 2022, Les Genoux is more wild-herbs fragrant and more stony. It feels different, too. The tannins are ultra-fine but ultra-taut. It's a quieter wine, its layers and layers of flavour held under light restraint. Wild cherry. Redcurrant. Blackberry and verveine and sage tea. It's mellifluous, but with a minor-key melody underpinned by haunting descant. Fruit spills through the lattice of structure like morning light through trees. As always, a great beauty." PAYWALL
Tom Cannavan
https://wine-pages.com/tasting-notes/domaine-of-the-bee-les-genoux-maury-sec-2022/August 19, 2024
94/100 "With only 13% alcohol as opposed to the straight Maury Sec's 14.5% (from the same vintage) this top wine of the estate is obviously conceived and made in a different style. From a single vineyard, it is based on Grenache but 15% of the blend is made with Grenache Gris and Grenache Blanc - pink and white variants. After foot-treading and fermentation in oak, it spent 15 months in Seguin Moreau's 500-litre 'Icone' barrels. Lighter in colour, and in aroma, there's more brightness to the red fruits and more of a pastille-like quality, but a note of herbal, hessian character comes through from the stems included in fermentation. In the mouth so supple and juicy. I do like the relative restraint of the lower alcohol here personally, and the juiciness to the tannins and acids which is fresher again that the straight Maury Sec. Wine Club members buy for £40."