Pedres Blanques - Grenache - Collioure, Roussillon, FR - 2022

@hirofumishoji

Notes from the Winery/Importer

It was Tomoko from Chanterêves who said tipped me off to go taste with her friends Rié & Hirofumi Shoji at the Angers tasting, Les Anonymes. With Pascaline our reaction was in sync. Wow. The couple makes wine in Collioure and vinifies with friends in Banyuls. They had worked in Burgundy with two Freds; she at Mugnier, he at Cossard. Both esteemed though they play to different fans. But seemingly the couple took away the wine wisdom from both and carved their own path. Last winter that wine, barely five months old, was a pulsating strobe light. Their star was born. Right before the 2018 vintage the two were almost deported for some completely bullshit reason, but sanity prevailed. They are legal! And so is the wine. The grapes, grenache noir with a touch of caladoc, are from two parcels grown on granite and schist. It’s 100% whole cluster, hands off, no SO2, and gorgeous. I tasted the finished wine eight months later in Burgundy. The strobe light still pulsed. Listen, do not attempt to drink this mindlessly. You’ll need to give it attention to experience the full taste of earth and fruit, exotic with smoked paprika-dusted licorice, cocoa, texture, and some high tones that brighten any brooding. Imported by Becky Wasserman Selections. -Alice Feiring

Notes on the Producer

Rié and Hiro are Japanese but they met at the wine school in Beaune. She went on to work for Fred Mugnier, among others; he, for five years at Domaine de Chassorney. They are passionate about vineyard work. So, when it came time to make their own wine, they had to look outside Burgundy for affordable vineyards. They tried with no luck in the north. Eventually, they found Collioure, and a retiring vigneron who sold them his vines. “And Collioure was free of other Japanese winemakers,” Hiro quips. The name of their domaine is Pedres Blanques, “White Rocks” in Catalan. In Collioure, the vines are “on” the sea. With their incredible steepness and thousands of terraces, they are some the most spectacular French vineyards we have seen. Rié and Hiro’s 3.5 hectares are in the most remote part of the appellation and at the top of the world. The view is stunning, the energy is amazing, but the climate often violent. The Tramontane wind is fierce and the place is arid. There is a flip side: no frost and almost no disease. Because of this, Rié and Hiro farm organically and do not need to use copper. (But they do have to do everything by hand or with a rototiller.) The couple’s first vintage consists of one wine, a Grenache grown on schist. It is vinified and aged in Banyuls in a facility they share with 9 other winemakers. It has a beautiful, whole cluster, floral and clove nose, and it’s not ‘first degree.’ You keep on coming back and back and back, for umami, for tapenade, for black and blue fruit. On the palate the fruit is both rich —with that southern, candied Grenache— and surprisingly buoyant. Where the wine departs from your usual vin de soif is with structure. Though this is an infused and unsulfured wine, with all the silkiness that comes from that, there is also verticality. Not old-school structure, mind you, but simply reminiscent of the vines: clinging to that schist with a mix of great will and fragility. Rié and Hiro have achieved a tall order on their first vintage: a natural wine that expresses its terroir with the clarity of an allegory. They also want to make rosé. When we talked about it, Pataille, Valentini, and Corneliessen came up… :-) -Becky Wasserman Imports - Location: Collioure, Côtes Catalanes - Size: 3.5 ha (8.65 ac) - Variety: Grenache - Viticulture: Organic (in conversion) - Vinification: 100% whole cluster, ambient yeast fermentation, no pumping, no added SO2, no fining, no filtration.