While Louis Barruol is best known for the wines he grows at Château de St-Cosme, the family’s winery in Gigondas, he’s also a skilled négociant, bottling wines from purchased fruit under the label “Saint Cosme.” He’s made his St-Joseph from the same source for 20 vintages, the vines growing in the granite soils of Malleval, along the border where St-Joseph meets Condrieu. The cooler temps at this northern end of the appellation were a bonus in the hot 2019 vintage, allowing the wine to grow ripe without losing its acid backbone. The result is a bright and invigorating red with a bone-warming radiance. Vinified with ambient yeasts in cement, and aged for a year in mostly used barrels, it feels pure and unfettered, with a fresh crunch to the fruit and effusive florals that Barruol finds common to sérine, an old, small-berried selection of syrah. Underneath, darker notes of damp earth and stone give the wine a fullness and firmness that bodes well for this wine’s future, though it’s hard to resist at the moment.
Winebow, NY
95
Saint Cosme 2019 St-Joseph
$40
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 here.
is W&S’s editor at large and covers the wines of the Mediterranean and Central and Eastern Europe for the magazine.
This story appears in the print issue of December 2021.
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