1968 | Domaine La Sobilane | Rivesaltes

Dried honey, marmalade, fig, hints of marzipan and Chinese 5-spice. Like the 1969 this is very well defined. The palate is beautifully balanced with a viscous texture. There are enticing notes of marmalade, nougat, cafe latte, clove, white pepper and fennel with a long and sustained finish that is a pure unadulterated joy.

Reviews:

• Richard Hemming: Concentrated fruit but there’s a funky, earthy, dusty character too. Brick and petrichor on the palate. Such a strange, compelling set of flavours.

• Vinous: The 1968 Rivesaltes has a more powerful bouquet than the 1969: dried honey, marmalade, fig, hints of marzipan and Chinese 5-spice. Like the 1969 this is very well defined. The palate is beautifully balanced with a viscous texture. There are enticing notes of marmalade, nougat, cafe latte, clove, white pepper and fennel with a long and sustained finish that is a pure unadulterated joy. Superb. Tasted with Philippe Gayral.

Producer Information

It is with great honor that I can offer today’s legendary 1949 Rivesaltes, a fortified wine that aged for 66 years in the same barrel before it was discovered, bottled in 2018, and allocated in micro-quantities. It is a remarkable wine of perseverance, passion, and antiquity from a bygone era when vin doux naturel was consumed and adored by everyone. And it wouldn’t be in front of you today without Philippe and Sandrine Gayral, a husband-wife treasure-hunting team who’ve spent the last two decades uncovering these sacred, all-but-forgotten wine antiques. Today’s 70-year-old gem from Domaine La Sobilane has been savored by some of the world’s most prestigious critics, but outside of them, very few have had the opportunity. Today, you have that rare chance to experience a legitimate piece of history that has outlived the winemaker, survived wars, and been preserved to absolute perfection. Of course, I’d be remiss if I didn’t tell you just how extraordinary profound the wine is: It has a luxurious, chameleonic flavor profile like no other and each sip brings profound depth and a finish that lasts so long it’s as if the wine is taking you on an intimate journey of its seven-decade life. We only have a handful of these wine artifacts to share today, and I assure you they’ll vanish quickly. Enjoy. When Phillipe and Sandrine Gayral were touring southern France 20 years ago, they stumbled upon a cache of vin doux naturel that had been aging in barrels for generations. That discovery led to a startling revelation: Dozens of families from all over Rivesaltes had been quietly preserving small stocks of wine—not for resale, mind you, but rather as family heirlooms that were siphoned off for special occasions. After tasting the first one, Philippe dedicated a career to scouring the countryside of Rivesaltes, Banyuls, and Maury in search of these “forgotten barrels.” He would meet with the families, who would then point them to their one or two barrels from decades past. Assuming nobody cared about the wine, some estates were ecstatic when he offered to buy the barrels and bottle them for resale. Others, however, took years of convincing. And then there were some estates that would tell them the barrel in question was from another local producer, bought by a friend of a friend long ago, so they would have to follow whatever breadcrumb trail remained. If that’s not a passion project, I don’t know what is! Southern France’s Vin Doux Naturel (VDN), was first made in the 13th-century when ‘mutage’ was discovered. Put simply, this is a process where a neutral spirit is added to prematurely kill yeast and suspend fermentation, leaving a concentrated, sweet wine with elevated alcohol (essentially the same practice used to make Port). The Languedoc-Roussillon region has been the traditional home of these wines in appellations such as Maury, Banyuls, and today’s AOC of origin, Rivesaltes.

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