Clos du Gravillas, Muscat De Saint Jean De Minervois 2016

In 1996 John and Nicole Bojanowski, a young Franco-American couple, purchased Clos de Gravillas in the Minervois region of south-western France and embarked upon a journey of making wine to best reflect the terroir of limestone gravel of their vineyards, where grapes have been grown for hundreds of years.

Perched on a plateau at an elevation of almost 1000ft, this 15-acre winery lies between the St. Chinian and Minerve canyons in the Parc Naturel of the Haut Languedoc just south of the Black Mountains. This location provides cool evening winds that let the grapes better retain their acidity and the hot summer temperatures assure the development of the necessary alcohol to balance acidity. This element of their terroir helps the grapes develop maximum depth of flavour.

Gravillas means gravel, and that’s just what you’ll find at this estate: gravel-rich soils that make for intense, concentrated wines from vines that have to really work for their nutrients. But it might as well mean gravitas, for the wines from Clos du Gravillas have weight and depth in spades.

The village of St Jean de Minervois is famous for its sweet and rich tasting Muscat {Muscat a Petit grains} the wine is fortified to stop fermentation when it reaches its minimum sugar content of 125 grams per litre. This makes for a marvellous aperitif and also goes seamlessly well with the cheese board.

TASTING NOTES

This sweet Muscat is from the tiny AOC Muscat de St Jean de Minervois, it’s wonderful as an aperitif or as a pudding wine, best slightly chilled it shows plenty of pineapple flavours floral nose and mineral freshness that St Jean Muscats are famed for. Honeyed structure and lots of minerality.

REVIEWS & AWARDS
“The Muscat grape, in its sweet form, has quite a reputation for coping with sticky sweet puddings, so I thought we’d give this a go. This was incredibly fresh, with the focus on primary tropical fruit. It was very sweet, clean and refreshing.” – Clive Platman.

This wine is from a certified producer.