The vines for both [white and red] wines are old and very old (exactly how old is not known, but some are still ungrafted and only yield between 11 to 21 hectoliters per hectare), and they have been rooted for decades or longer, which, in the words of US importer Rosenthal, is ‘a geologist's dream.’ Rosenthal explained that ‘the variety of soils within such a compact wine-growing zone is mindboggling: there is brown slate and black slate; there are deep alluvial gravel deposits full of large, slick river stones; there is iron-oxide-drenched marl of a deep red hue; and, in most of these areas, the mother rock itself lies beneath a mere eight to 15 inches of topsoil, demanding the tough old vines to plunge down, down, down for precious water. The soils here were formed in the last ice age when the slate massif of the Pyrenees collided violently with the limestone massif of Corbieres, and Calce encompasses the folds, faults, and striations of that geological episode. Consequently, wines from Calce offer some of the most profound, most spine-tingling, most physically palpable minerality of any wines on the planet.’ How right he is. But something else is added: permanent winds; from the north, the Tramontane blows into the vineyards, from the Mediterranean comes the Marine. The relatively or even sensitively cool temperatures, combined with Calce's altitude, cause slower ripening and keep the alcohol moderate, the acids happy and, thanks to lower pH levels, tastily vital .... From the beginning, the goal of the Burgundy-savvy partners was to produce fresh, elegant and light wines, which hardly seems possible in the south of France, but they succeed in Calce in a fascinating way. The 16 hectares of vines at Domaine de L’Horizon are scattered and distributed among numerous small, very old plots of gnarled, wind-twisted vines of Macabeu, Grenache Blanc and especially Gernache Gris and Noir, Carignan and Syrah. The leaf wall does not need to be cut here, and yields are naturally dramatically low. Everything here is done by hand. And in the cellar, which moved to the former Matassa cellar in the fall of 2019, there are no corrective measures whatsoever. White grapes are pressed whole and immediately fermented in large Stockinger barrels (initially smaller ones as well)."
Stephan Reinhardt, Wine Advocate
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