« Yves Falmet is doing something so special that people should be sitting up and taking notice. I’m becoming convinced that he is making some of the most elegant wines in the Languedoc. »
Mourvèdre 2020
17.5/20 jancisrobinson.com
Full bottle 1,154 g. Certified HVE. Hand-picked grapes from a steep hillside vineyard in St-Chinian. Pesticide-free.
His 2020 Mourvèdre is yet another confirmation of his almost wizard-like ability to make a cashmere silky, jewelled-fruit wine out of a grape that I usually find stomps in heftily, wearing a scowl, muddy steel-toe-cap boots and thick dark canvas overalls, smoking a Gauloises, smelling of farmyard and uttering not much in an unintelligible mutter.
This wine smells of jasmine, violet and pomegranate molasses.
Sure, there is a lick of smoke, but it’s folded into deeply sweet dark fruit – blueberry, black fig, blackberry – and a sheath of tissue-paper-and-600-thread-cotton-textured tannins”.
Very Very Good Value (Tamlyn Currin)
Carignan 2020
16.5/20 jancisrobinson.com
Full bottle 1,146 g. Certified HVE. Hand-picked grapes. Pesticide free.
“Savoury, dark, tamari-umami fruit on the nose. Blackcurrants dipped in kombucha reduction.
Bendy-firm tannins that have the grip and feel of a yoga mat. So much salty savouriness that it almost tastes like Bovril tea with a teaspoon of pomegranate molasses stirred in.
But not thick or heavy at all, despite having the characteristic meatiness and rosemary-stalk ruggedness of Carignan.
Wonderfully peppery towards the mid-point and a fresh breath of pine needles towards the end.
This is a food wine. (TC)
Réserve 2020
16.5/20 jancisrobinson.com
Full bottle 1,150 g. Certified HVE. Mourvèdre, Grenache, Syrah and Carignan from steep, pesticide-free vineyards in the south of St-Chinian.
“A touch of glacé cherry on the nose, crushed ripe raspberries, fine-crushed wet gravel. Unusually fine tannins – this really plays in the mouth on tiptoes.
Lovely carpaccio layers between the cool red fruit, threaded with rosemary and sansho pepper and sarsaparilla.
A particularly delicate expression of St-Chinian, but that’s not to say it’s insubstantial. If you prefer your reds elegant, this is for you”.
Good Value (TC)