Eloquent and amazing reviews on Jancis Robinson's website
Tamlyn Currin describes and scores our current range of wines.
For full details of the Roussillon report, please see
Full bottle 1,166 g. Old vines, hand-picked. Strikingly unusual nose – I can smell guava jam (something I haven’t smelt in 27 years) and tamarillo, rose hips and wood polish, and a tiny, intense floral note that makes me think of walking in the garden on a hot summer night. Wonderful freshness. It has the cool rustle of walking through russet leaves in autumn woodland. A touch of tamarind paste, white pepper, za’atar, baharat. I love the sense of metal sculpture I get in this wine – it’s not that I am literally tasting iron or rust or copper or pewter, but when I taste this wine, it’s like the wine version of a Rochelle Ford metal sculpture. It carries in its molecules the twist and sinews of the old vine trunks, the battering and weathering of nature and time, the glow of a thousand sunsets, edges and angles, sheen and rust, rain and dust. VGV (TC) 17
Drink 2021 - 2028
Full bottle 1,162 g. 100% Carignan from 75-year-old vines on clay-limestone soils and 40-year-old vines on black schist. Low yields, small production, organic viticulture (although not certified), natural insect defences, no herbicides. Hand-picked. A mixture of carbonic maceration and traditional fermentation. 12 months in old French oak. Unfined. Clarion-clear purity of red fruit on the nose with the lift of wild lavender, cistus, rock-growing herbs. I so often describe Carignan as rugged, because that's what it tastes like, so many apologies for using that word again. But this one is rugged with friendly charm, without the battle glower of Carignan. It's juice-jostling cherries, white pepper, tamarind, lavender. It has lemon-peel oils and dried lemongrass and an enthusiastic rub of linseed-oil furniture polish. Like every vintage of Rescapé, it's moreishly delicious, you could drink it slightly chilled, it's perfect with cured meat, and if you had this on the table with noisy friends you'd go through several bottles before you even realised! Yum and VGV. (TC) 17
Drink 2021 - 2024
Full bottle 1,170 g. Old vines, hand-picked. Smells of wild-boar saucisson and hot tar and blue berries and pepper. Tastes of wild blackberries, campfire embers in cool milky dawn, fridge-cold morels, rain on slate, cola, smoke, black-pepper syrup. I love the fierce, bright Tellicherry peppercorn character that seems to be stippled into the bones of this wine. It gives it such remarkable freshness. A wine that is begging for coal-grilled red meat and roasted veg, loaded with resin-fragrant, woody herbs. Long and muscular. GV (TC) 17
Drink 2021 – 2029
Full bottle 1,146 g. Old vines, hand-picked. Syrah, Grenache, Mourvèdre. Aged in French barriques. I cannot applaud the Treloars enough for their light bottle weights. We need a heroes corner on the website for producers who care more about the environment than their egos. On the label, they’ve suggested that this wine can be drunk from 2015 to 2025, but I would argue that this Tahi has just hit her stride. Absolutely stunning right now. Those tannins have melted into the wine, but, like the Three Peaks, there is such structural power and impact in this wine that it tastes as if it was formed in the hands of a sculptor. If Three Peaks 2018 is Rochelle Ford, Tahi 2013 is Karen Cusolito – a wine that is silent, but howls with emotion; a wine that is raw and edgy, but every link, line, circle, piece flows with exquisite grace and shape; a wine that is still and rooted to the earth but it dances and etches the sky. A wine that has stories etched into every mouthful. (TC) 18
Drink 2018 – 2025
Grenache Gris, Macabeu, Carignan Blanc. Old vines. Hand-picked. Soft, pillowy, creamy wine, scented with elderflower honey. Popcorn, roasted coconut, key-lime pie, creamed peaches. Hay-meadow fragrance whipped into cream. The acidity is low, but the wine has this nacreous, paua-shell-like, inner-structural glow; a moon ring. (TC)
Drink 2021 - 2025
17
100% Muscat, spontaneously fermented, mutage with neutral grape spirit. Golden. Incredibly floral on the nose – daphne, frangipani, honeysuckle, mock orange (philadelphus) blossom. I could sit here for hours, just breathing it in. On the palate, it feels like viscose, weighted but not heavy, slow flowing but not thick. It tastes of lemon posset and apple mint, ripe pineapple in thick coconut cream, lime peel in cumin syrup. Very low acidity but the subtle bitter runnels rilling through the sweetness give it structure and contrast. A lovely VDN that would work beautifully with any tropical-fruit-based desserts as well as baklava or something like this Greek baked feta in filo pastry drizzled with honey. GV (TC)
Drink 2021 – 2028
16.5
