Clos Marie Pic Saint-Loup Cuvee Simon, Languedoc-Roussillon, France

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The 2006 Coteaux du Languedoc Pic Saint-Loup Simon smells of black cherry and purple plum sprinkled with nutmeg and cinnamon. Sweetly fruited and thickly rich on the palate, it nonetheless preserves an admirable sense of clarity, juicy refreshment, and complementary iodine and wet stone mineral suggestions, even if it misses the formidable sense of underlying extract or multiple facets of the dramatic 2007. Peyrus thinks this is shutting down after bottling. Wait two years to enjoy it. Christophe Peyrus and Francois Julien had only recently assembled the majority of their 2007 reds when I tasted with them in December, and that collection is as exciting as past experience with Clos Marie and recognition of the potential of this vintage would lead one to expect. “Ripeness came early and homogeneously,” says owner-winemaker Peyrus. “The harvest was very rapid, and the evolution of the wines has been precocious.” Yet even under these conditions, potential alcohol seldom exceeded 14.5% even for the blocks of Grenache, a circumstance Peyrus attributes to his biodynamic methods of cultivation. He is also a partisan of vendange entier (the inclusion of whole clusters in red wine fermentation – in his case generally at least 50%) and says the stems were thoroughly ripe (i.e. lignified) in 2007. It’s a measure of the excitement that within fifteen years, this estate has ascended from obscurity to the top echelon of French wine addresses. There is never a lot of new wood in this dripping-wet cellar, although much of what there is, interestingly, comes from Austrian barrel-maker Franz Stockinger. (The 2007 reds had never been sulfured when I tasted them – that happens here only at bottling, and then only very judiciously.)Imported by Weygandt-Metzler, Unionville, PA; tel. (610) 486-0800 and Beaune Imports, Berkeley, CA; tel. (510) 559 1040