Bastide Miraflors

We've had this one on our shelves for the better part of a year.  Doesn't sell worth a hoot.  What's the problem?  It must be the packaging because it sure isn't what's in the bottle.  

Bastide Miraflors (BM?) is a blend of 75% Syrah with 25% Grenache sourced from fifty-five year old organically farmed vines in a region historically known for that fine blend.  That region, Cotes du Roussillon, is the southernmost part of France adjacent to the Spanish border with flatland vineyards closer to the Mediterranean Sea and higher altitude vineyards nearer to the Pyranees Mountains.  Bastide utilizes soils of granite, schist and alluvial gravel at altitudes ranging from 35 meters to 150 meters.

Bastide is made by the very modern winery of Domaine Lafage of Peripignan.  It is an Indication Geographique Protegee (IGP) level wine, not rising to appellation status (AOP) but not vin d'table either.  The IGP Cotes Catalanes, as it is called, is the same geographical region as used in the earlier term, Pyranese-Orientales.  That region is hot and dry with poor soils and garrigue covered hills that force vine taproots deep into the earth for sustenance.  The resultant wines are known for their concentrated flavors.  All of the governmental wine legalese, by the way, is courtesy of the European Union in 2009 when they replaced the previous legal mumbo-jumbo in place since 1968.

What makes this wine so good?  

Three things: 

The grapes are hand harvested.  That means quality control.  Harvesting machines don't descriminate.  Hands do.  

The grapes receive a total of six weeks in maceration before three quarters of the young wine sees a year in concrete.  The remainder is put in oak.  That's winemaking.

Remember the garrigue mentioned earlier?  We've written about it before.  It is low lying vegetation that exudes a heady complex herbaceousness.  Think - Herbs de Provence.  Lavendar and mint.  Winemakers in southern France believe that airborne herbaceousness becomes part of a wine's flavor profile.  Want more?  It is further believed that garrigue soils can transmit that same herbaceousness to vine roots for a furtherance of the same phenomena.  Hmmm.