Grapes: Syrah
Region: Roussillon, France
Vintage: 2021
Viticulture: Organic
Soils: Shale + Gneiss, and Granite
Vinification: Cabronic maceration for 3 weeks, spontaneous fermentation.
Aging: 1/4 aged in barrels, 3/4 in concrete tank.
Fining or Filtering: None
Notes from the Importer: Edouard Lafitte is a peer of Jean-Francois Nicq (the founding winemaker at Estezargues) and Eric Pfifferling of Domaine l’Anglore. All of these winemakers are known for working with Carbonic Maceration, and we find Edouard’s wines to be consistently some of the best of this style in southern France. The use of Carbonic Maceration in the hands of the right winemaker can yield a wine of startling finesse and terroir. Le Bout du Monde is located in a new burgeoning hotspot of natural winemakers centered around the tiny village of la Tour de France (not to be confused with the more masculine sounding bicycle race, le Tour de France). There are about a dozen young natural winemakers working in this area, but Edouard is one of the first to arrive, back in 1995. One of the first visitors to his winery saw the isolation of this spot and termed it “le bout du monde,” the end of the world. The vistas of the Pyrénées-Orientales mountain ranges framing the vines will completely take your breath away. Edouard says many days when he’s laboring away in the vines under the hot sun and gets fatigued, all he has to do is pause and take a look around him at the natural beauty to become completely revitalized.
Edouard’s winery is a space he shares with Loic Rourhe of Domaine du Possible, and is the town’s old wine cooperative space. He has cleverly repurposed the old wineries 3000-liter Cement tanks into a fermentation and ageing space, by carving out a large space for a sliding door, which he can then cool down to do his low temperature carbonic macerations.
