Deep ruby red colour. Vibrant strawberry and mineral scents are deepened by singed earth and tobacco, with a floral quality adding energy. Sharply focused red berry flavours are pleasingly bitter and precise. Turns spicier on the long, clinging finish.
Saint-Joseph Pierres Sèches comes from different Syrah vineyards grown on shallow, sandy, granitic soils on the hillsides of Chavanay. "Les Pierres Sèches” refers to the dry stone walls used to strengthen the vine terracing. Again, the grapes are hand-picked; they are then sorted, crushed and partially destemmed in the cellar. Fermented in barriques, the wine will spent 18 months in barrels before bottling.
Yves Cuilleron initially worked as an engineer before being hit by the wine bug at age 26. He went to train at Ecole Viticole of Macon for a year then came back home, at the foot of Condrieu and Côte Rotie’s hills and took over the family’s 3.5-ha estate.
Vineyards here are steep. The topography demands farmers perform most labour by hand, a happy example of geography creating the necessity to do things correctly in the vineyard. And for the area of the northern Rhone surrounding Cuilleron’s domaine, perhaps the 1800s were better times. Over the course of the 20th century the great AOCs of this area were nearly relegated to historical footnote status, names that wine lovers knew but never had the opportunity to taste.