2022 Château de Mérande Arbin La Noire

VERY LIMITED - Just 60 bottles for Australia.

95 Points, Gary Walsh (The Wine Front) – “Mondeuse from Savoie. I opened a bottle of 2016 Giacomo Boveri Freisa last night, and aside grape variety and region, I think the two wines have a distinct kinship, though this wine is even more emphatic in its ‘liquid mineral’ qualities. Blueberry, black cherry, violet, black pepper and cardamom pods. It’s packed with graphite tannin and forms an image of slate tumbling as you taste it, blue fruit, dark spices, a clip of juniper berry tang, glassy acidity, and for a wine of such modest alcohol, the depth and concentration here is quite remarkable. It finishes with a slick of tannin, and gee you have to like tannin, which I do, so they please me no end. This is a distinctive and outstanding wine for me.” Drink 2028 to 2040+

Weighing in at jsut 12.5%. Mérande's flagship wine from very old vines which throw little fruit. It is an unashamedly powerful expression of Mondeuse – where you can see its connection with syrah on full show.  Blackeberry & blue fruit here, it’s dense & potent but also distinctly mineral & fresh.  An essay in concentration with a very long life ahead of it. From soils of glacial moraine covered with calc-shists, with the whole bunch fermentation adding freshness.