A vin miraculeux from Fronton, in France’s Southwest

As part of our recent Southwest France coverage, we tasted four wines from the Famille Arbeau, growers in Fronton, in the IGP Comté Tolosan. Their freshness was impressive, their structures based on bright fruit tannins. Since the family chooses to bottle the wines as Vin de France, rather than using a Southwest appellation, we decided to report on them separately from the others, presenting L’Alignement des Planètes as a Wine of the Week.

Brother-and-sister team Géraud and Anne Arbeau are the fourth generation to run their family’s wine business, based in Fronton at the Château Coutinel. The vines grow in sandy silt and gravel, farmed under organics (Ecocert certified since 2021). Anne says their goal is to produce vins de soif, so they bottle this with minimal aging, to preserve the fresh fruit in bottle. Rather than wait to release the wine until the IGP panel has approved it, they choose to bottle it as Vin de France. “Indeed,” says Anne Arbeau, “in France we have a lot of AOP, a lot of IGP, and even most French people don’t know where they are. So, we think that Vin de France is easier to understand.”

Their latest releases include a 2022 gamay labelled Il Est des Nôôôtres, unexpectedly meaty and rich, though light in body (92 points). And a kosher red blend of negrette and syrah, the 2022 Bereshit. It’s a more powerful wine with figgy fruit, scents of tobacco ash and bloody tannins (89 points). Importer Zev Rovine brings in 100 cases of these two wines, while he doubles that supply for the wine that blew us away, Arbeau’s vin miraculeux:

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Famille Arbeau 2023 Vin de France L’Alignement des Planètes

$19

With its complex scent of raspberries on the vine and fresh-picked forest mushrooms, this turns toward wild berry flavors and a hint of skunky reduction (perhaps because the wine is made without added yeasts and bottled with minimal aging—in any case, it responds well to decanting). A blend of braucol (50 percent) with malbec and cabernet, the wine is built on austere tannins (there’s a touch of first press added back to the lot after fermentation in vat). Yet those tannins are light enough to leave a beautiful fresh berry taste—complete with the seeds—and a floral note of blossoming thyme. Very long in flavor, this would be lovely with seared duck breast and grilled maitake mushrooms. Oooh, that wine makes me happy.

Every week, our editors highlight a wine that intrigued them in our blind panel tastings, expanding on their tasting note in this space. These are entirely editorial choices; there are no paid placements. Subscribers can also access the original tasting note by searching h ere.