2018 Domaine Paul Meunier-Centernach Chorèmes Blanc

80% Macabeu, 20% Grenache Gris; all farmed organically on black schist soils deep in France’s Roussillon on the flanks of the Pyrenées. This single vineyard was planted as a field blend in 1950, and is still plowed by horse. Coharvested and cofermented with native yeasts in amphora and steel. Aged on the lees for 18 months before bottling unfined and unfiltered with minimal sulphur. This is first and foremost a wine of texture and mouthfeel- the flavors and aromas are quite delicate and need quite a bit of aeration to fully flesh out. It’s full bodied and rich, but delicate and elegant at the same time. With notes of stone and stone fruit, wildflower honey, honeysuckle, herbs and mineral water, this impeccably balanced wine is round in texture but with plenty of underlying acidity. The wine stays with you, lingering on the palate. Demands attention- and food!

17.5 points, Jancis Robinson. "Smells of wild honey and mountain herbs, chypre and cistus. The texture, which is the first thing that fills the senses, feels like hand-made cotton paper in its crisp yet tensile, fibrous strength, and the way it makes the colours of the wine appear richer and deeper, the way it carries the watermark of the vineyard. I can taste honeysuckle and candied orange peel, lanolin and the melting wax of a soy candle. It’s a wine that seems to carry the last-gold-glow-on-rocks of early sunset, the dust of time, and incipient, tentative shadows teasing at the lustrous burnish of the fruit. It’s full, rounding out like a Buddha belly of calm stillness in the mid palate; but narrows to a long, long, silvery silk ribbon on the finish. It is a wine worth complete attention."