Winemaker Notes
#16 wine in VinePair's Top 50 of 2018
Lychee-pink color, very pale and limpid. The nose has great finesse. Pink grapefruit and linden blossom notes reveal this wine’s very rich mineral quality in a poetic evocation of the sun rising over the Provence garrigue on a summer day. On the palate, the wine is ample and balanced around sensations of freshness, delicacy and sweetness. It is bursting with small fresh fruits such as the arbutus berries on the wooded hillsides of the schist terroir of the Château la Gordonne. The long, pleasant finish expresses the finesse and flavour of a wild strawberry sorbet.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
Named after the chapel at the Gordonne vineyard, this wine—which is relatively deep-pink in color for a Provence rosé—is soft, packed with ripe red-berry fruits and a generous richness. A touch of spice gives it a rounded finish. Drink now.
Whether it’s playful and fun or savory and serious, most rosé today is not your grandmother’s White Zinfandel, though that category remains strong. Pink wine has recently become quite trendy, and this time around it’s commonly quite dry. Since the pigment in red wines comes from keeping fermenting juice in contact with the grape skins for an extended period, it follows that a pink wine can be made using just a brief period of skin contact—usually just a couple of days. The resulting color depends on grape variety and winemaking style, ranging from pale salmon to deep magenta.
Cotes de Provence is an extensive but valuable appellation that includes vineyards bordering the main Provencal appellations. Its sites vary from subalpine hills, which receive the cooling effects of the mountains to the north, to the coastal St-Tropez, a region mainly influenced by the warm Mediterranean sunshine.
Here the focus is on quality rosé, as it defines four fifths of the region’s wines. Following in the rosé footsteps, a lot of new effort is going into the region’s red production as well. A new generation has turned its focus on high quality Grenache, Syrah, Cinsault and Carignan. Cotes de Provence white wines, which represent a miniscule part of the region as far as volume, are nonetheless worthy of consideration and can include any combination of Clairette, Semillon, Ugni Blanc and Vermentino.