Chateau de Caladroy Cotes du Roussillon Villages Cuvee Les Schistes 2018
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The soils on this rugged mountain ridge are a mix of sand and clay on top of black schist. Schist(es) terroir for French vineyards can be found in pockets of Languedoc (notable Faugères); parts of Anjou; and up in the northern Rhône in part of Côte-Rôtie and across the river in Seyssuel. And there's a big swath of it over the border in Spain's Priorat. Schist tends to emphasize fruit rather than tannin, and red wine from these terroirs typically show a fruit purity in a decidedly darker profile than limestone’s red notes (deep with a verticality too, rather than broadly horizontal on the palate, along with a lift of minerality). You'll get this in Caladroy's lithe yet intense black and blue fruit profile.
Today, that fortress and the rest of what became Caladroy is perched on a knoll at a mountain pass; below, on a broad saddle of a ridge, grow the vineyards. The school no longer functions, the workers' quarters lie empty except at harvest, and the manor stands majestically unoccupied, as if lost in time. You drive up from Perpignan, a city which has a whole lot more in common with Barcelona just over the border than it does with distant Paris, and climb winding roads into the hills where the sparsely populated land is rocky and covered with scrub hardwoods and the ever-present garrigue. At the top of the last rise, the road turns onto the saddle of vineyards; at the far end, beyond a windbreak of cedars, rises the Caladroy knoll with white buildings and red clay-tiled roofs. Looming in the distance are the snow-capped Pyrenees.
This is Roussillon, the sunniest viticultural area in France, forever battered by a dry wind that sweeps off the high Pyrenees known as the tramontane. Fully exposed at over 1,000 feet above the nearby Mediterranean, Caladroy and its vineyards occupy the top of the Fenouilledes hills, isolated between two river valleys. This altitude gives Caladroy's wines a certain measure of finesse that nicely balances their darkly concentrated flavors.
Around the turn of this century, the cellar was completely revamped and many vineyard parcels were replanted, with Grenache, Syrah, and Mourvedre dominating. Yields here average 25hl/ha, far below the permissible 45hl/ha granted "Cote du Roussillon-Villages," which is the top appellation designation here.
With bold fruit flavors and accents of sweet spice, Grenache, Syrah and Mourvèdre form the base of the classic Rhône Red Blend, while Carignan, Cinsault and Counoise often come in to play. Though they originated from France’s southern Rhône Valley, with some creative interpretation, Rhône blends have also become popular in other countries. Somm Secret—Putting their own local spin on the Rhône Red Blend, those from Priorat often include Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon. In California, it is not uncommon to see Petite Sirah make an appearance.
An appellation solely for dry red wines from Roussillon, Côtes du Roussillon-Villages is a step up in quality compared to, simply, Côtes du Roussillon. The area is in the northern third of Roussillon, bordered on its southern end by the Têt River, which runs precisely from west to east. Five villages can append their own name to the Côtes du Roussillon-Villages appellation name: Caramany, Latour de France, Lesquerde, Tautavel and the last, south of the Têt River, Les Aspres.
Côtes du Roussillon-Villages red wines are blends made from Grenache, Syrah, Mourvedre and small amounts of Carignan, Cinsault and the lesser known, Lledoner Pelut (a relative of Grenache).