2018 Sainte Croix Magneric
2018 Sainte Croix Magneric
The wine smells of ripe cherries and blackberries, combined with fine licorice aromas. On the palate it is melty and intense, with fine tannins and great intensity.
90/100 Points Konstantin Baum
Wine attracts people. This is evident again and again when I talk to the winemakers behind the wines. Some families may have been dedicated to wine for generations, but they have often dropped everything to venture into the unknown and bottle their own fermented grape juice. That's exactly what happened to the Bowens, Englishmen who first devoted themselves to wine and then to the wild Corbieres. They have found their new home close to the Mediterranean coast, in Fraisse.
The Corbieres is truly wild and the area has long suffered from extremely low wine prices. Many winegrowers have given up in recent decades, and so you can buy vineyards here for an apple and an egg. But these vineyards are often quite extraordinary, planted with old, gnarled vines and grape varieties that have been forgotten today. Working with such vineyards is often laborious because there is little mechanization possible here. If you put in the effort, you can produce excellent wines here and have a particularly good price-enjoyment ratio.
You can quickly tell from Elizabeth and Jon Bowen's English accents where they actually come from, but their wines clearly speak of their origins in the local dialect. Cooled by the Mediterranean wind, warmed by the southern French sun and concentrated by the old vines, they are aromatically complex and supple. The Magneric is a blend of Grenache, Syrah, Carignan and Mourvedre, which are harvested with tiny yields of around 20 hl/ha and then mature for a long time in old barriques.
The wine smells of ripe cherries and blackberries, combined with fine licorice aromas. On the palate it is melty and intense, with fine tannins and great intensity.
90/100 Points Konstantin Baum
