La Spanda, "No End No Beginning" 2021

In one of southern France’s most wine-crazy and now wine-famous towns, another new exciting voice has entered the fray. Well, new-ish. As their importer Bon Raisin puts it, “This is Virginie’s first vintage of wines from La Spanda. It’s a new start in a relatively new place.” For fifteen years prior to the launching of her 4.5 hectare project in the Roussillon’s Calce, otherwise home to the like of Gerard Gauby, Tom Lubbe of Matassa, FX Daure, and many others, Virginie Maignien co-founded and ran the iconic natural wine estate in Gaillac known as Domaine des Causse Marines with her partner Patrice Lescarret. It was this experience – on the back of wine education in Beaune & work at a venerated wine guide & as a caviste in Paris – that buoyed her confidence to take the plunge and work on her own in the deep south of France with some of the country’s most awe-inspiring views. Between the ever-undulating sierra of the Pyrenées Mountains & the Mediterranean a stone’s throw that-a-way in the distance, Virginie is tending to gnarly Macabeu & Grenache & Muscat vines – specialties of the area, as you may well know from any of Matassa’s glorious expressions of the region – in addition to trading with FX Dauré (Domaine des Lampyres) some grapes in order to make fun one-offs (a Macabeu pét-nat was made last vintage). Zero/zero wines of profound potential with the bedrock of sturdy evidence that here may be one of France’s best terroirs.

A blend of Syrah & Grenache Noir. Grenache is fermented first in whole clusters, then pressed and added into a vat of destemmed Syrah (flotation method!). After fermenting with wild yeasts, the wine is pressed and aged in tank. Unfined, unfiltered, with no SO2.