January 23, 2014: Clos du Gravillas Sous les Cailloux 2010

Last night, I served coca cola baby back ribs with baked beans and cole slaw.  Paul really thought this called for a red. I think his usual wine favorite of a big bold American red would have been nice, but I generally prefer the more subtle approach of the French... so this wine was something of marriage of our preferences and a delight at that.

Made by an American who goes by the name of John Bojanowski and his French wife Nicole in "a St. Jean gravel field," this wine is an organic blend that changes year to year. They began making the wine in 1996 and several years later managed to salvage some 1911 carignan and grenache gris vines.  In 2010, this wine contains 24% each syrah, cabernet sauvignon, and carignan and 7% each mourvedre, terret, grenache and counoiset. Those aren't grape names you hear every day either!  Clos du Gravillas is 8 hectares on a 300 meter plateau of crushed white gravel and calcium carbonate in the Parc Naturel de Haut Languedoc surrounded by the Meditteranean brush and scrub oak.The winemakers uses all organic techniques and crushes the wine with "several pairs of boots." They run a small, low tech,  low yield operation (8000 bottles.) It is aged for a year in steel and then bottled by hand.

JUST THE FACTS:
It pours a very nice dark ruby color.

The bouquet is "wet earth," blackberries and dark cherry.

On the palate, the blending of the berry tastes is really beautiful and you get all sorts of dark berry tastes: blackberries, blueberries, dark cherries and currants. The tannins are definitely there and you get them in the finish.

This wine is meant to be drunk young, but a couple of years didn't seem to hurt it.

Most of the ratings I have seen are 90 to 93

This is another great find under $20. We  paid $16.99 as one of our favorite wine store,Asheville wine market. The price seems to range  $13 to $20.


WINE QUOTE OF THE DAY:
"Beer  is  made  by. Men and wine by God ."-----Martin  Luther