Wine & Spirits - Winter 2020 - 52

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O LD WO R LD

LOUIS BARRUOL

Château
de Saint Cosme
FRANCE | RHÔNE
Louis Barruol's holistic approach to farming paid off
in the challenging vintage of 2018, with a series of
exceptional Gigondas.

FOUNDED:

1490
OWNER/
WINEMAKER/
VITICULTURIST:

Louis Barruol
ACRES OWNED:

55
ANNUAL
PRODUCTION:

13,300 cases
ESTATE GROWN:

100%
IMPORTER:

Craft + Estate/
Winebow
Imports, NY
52

THE BARRUOL FAMILY TRACE THE BEGINNINGS of Saint Cosme
to 1490, though the Gallo-Roman stone troughs on the property speak to a winemaking history that dates as far back
as the ﬁrst century BCE. It wasn't until the 1960s, however,
that it began to take on its current form: That was soon after
Henri Barruol married Claude Rolland, whose family owned
the historic Gigondas vineyard. Barruol was a cabinetmaker
from Provence, but the vineyard fascinated him and he began
to apply his technical and creative skills to winegrowing. He
became an early proponent of organic farming, an interest he
passed on to his son, Louis, who began working with him in
1992. Louis shifted the family's wine projects into higher gear,
adding a négociant line to the business in 1997 and acquiring
more vineyards in Gigondas and farther aﬁeld: He owns 25
acres in Violes, where he produces Côtes du Rhône wines, and
recently purchased Château de Rouanne and its 153-acre vineyard in Vinsobres; he also founded Forge Cellars in the Finger
Lakes of New York in 2011. Yet his focus remains on Gigondas, where his attention to detail reveals the character of individual parcels in a range of site-speciﬁc bottlings. As the estate
is situated at the meeting of two geological faults, the geology
is complicated and unique; the different proportions of Miocene sand and Cretaceous limestone and varied elevations
make for fascinating differences among the wines. To draw
out those differences, and to sustain his old vines, he's developed a holistic approach that goes beyond organic farming

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BUYING GUIDE 2021

(the property was certiﬁed in 2010) to include biodynamic
techniques tailored to the warm climate; in the winery, he
works to enhance the terroir expression through wholebunch fermentations powered by ambient yeasts in neutral
vessels, like cement tanks or used barrels. In 2018, a vintage plagued by rain, heat and downy mildew, his vineyard
work paid off with a series of wines-from basic to singleparcel bottlings-that transcend fruit ﬂavors, transmitting
a clear sense of place. -T.Q.T.
2018 Gigondas Le Poste ($138, 98 points) Le Poste is a
steep 2.5 acres of limestone soils planted in 1963 at a cool
elevation of 918 feet. The vines at the site seem to have
ignored the stress of the vintage, providing fruit for a wine
that's as elegant as it is monumental. It feels all of a piece, a
sweeping expanse of ﬂavor that touches on foie gras and leg
of lamb, ﬁgs and cherries. The ﬂavors contrast freshness and
funk, light and dark, lasting and lifted with a structural gravitas
that promises to carry the wine for many years in the cellar.
2018 Gigondas Hominis Fides ($138, 94 points) When Louis
Barruol's ancestors planted Hominis Fides some 90 years ago,
they set out to mitigate the impact of unpredictable weather by
including alicante, arimon, carignan and a host of other varieties
among the grenache plantings. That, and the fast-draining mix
of sand and limestone they grow on, offered an advantage in
the wet 2018 vintage. This wine shines bright and deep, moving
past toasty oak notes (20 percent of the lot aged in new barrels)
into spiced cherries, its generous build refreshed by the scent of
resinous herbs). The wine lasts for days after opening, each sip
a liquid trip to Gigondas's garrigue-scented hills.
2018 Gigondas Le Claux ($138, 93 points) Le Claux is just
downslope from Le Poste, planted in 1870 in an early adaptation of phylloxera-resistant American rootstocks, and the plot
still retains some of those original vines-about ten percent,
Louis Barruol believes, crediting his father for his heroic efforts
to revive them. The parcel produced a particularly dark, brooding Gigondas in 2018, with dense black-ﬁg and blackberry ﬂavors and an intriguingly earthy, gamey funk, and yet there's
still crunch to the fruit, the wine's heft lifted by its vibrancy.
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