Yannick Pelletier, "Volatil" 2021

A huge strength of the Languedoc, viticulturally speaking & perhaps counterintuitively, is… its hugeness. Long mired in “the wine world’s” general view of things as a flatland-dominant, hot ocean of plonk (harsh!), the Languedoc was maybe keeping its best secrets to itself. Within this unfairly large region (it is a politically drawn one, not a logically viticulturally-drawn one – a region that was even bigger (!) when it was bizarrely expanded to include a hyphenated bedfellow to the extreme south at Spain’s border, the Roussillon), there exist nooks and crannies of extreme ‘terroir’ variation, which really means you get sudden yet drastic shifts in elevation, stratigraphic composition, climatic posture, etc. Along the few vertiginous, schistous hillsides of the region, near Saint Chinian, Yannick Pelletier has – since 2004 – converted his life as a one-time wine merchant into that of a staple producer of pure, elegant Saint Chinian wines like no other. It was after a stint interning at the nearby legendary low-intervention estate of Saint Chinian, Domaine Léon Barral, that Yannick’s eyes (& heart) were opened to this other end of wine, one far from the chemical-heavy conventions of the Languedoc. The wines, then, present as no surprise: they are honest & balanced, wild within their own very neat frameworks. There is a real suave aspect to his wines, the kind of swagger begotten by rigorous vineyard work – they feel at extreme ease with themselves.

Languedoc, France. A joyful, pure, light-bodied Cinsault that recalls a younger, spicier L'Anglore. Fermented in whole clusters with wild yeasts in stainless steel. Unfined, unfiltered, no SO2.