Calcinaires Blanc 2014. Domaine Gauby

Three generations of Gaubys have cultivated, harvested and vinified in Calce, north of Perpignan in France. This village boasts a mixture of soils, but it is the limestone that predominates, ideal for the white grapes, which have long been grown in the area. Jerez has its Palomino Fino, Champagne its Chardonnay, but in the Languedoc-Roussillon we find the Muscat, Macabeo,  Grenache Blanc, and the Chardonnay too.  The Gaubys work over 80 hectares dedicated to polyculture, 40 hectares of which are biodynamic vineyards.  All the products they use to treat the land come from the same land. This wine is the first to be released and is more approachable because it has undergone little ageing and that which it has, has been without oak.  An early harvest of 50% Muscat, 20% Macabeo and 30% Chardonnay is directly pressed with the grapes mixed.  Using indigenous yeasts, the wine is produced on the fine lees (one racking only) and bottled unfiltered and without clarification.  The wine personifies the purity of the Languedoc landscape with its gentle, rugged hills, from the vine to the glass. Aromas of lemon verbena, mimosa, broom and orange blossoms. It is evocative of the countryside in spring, of cereals and poppies, of the freshness of dawn, of heather…. Overall a very pleasant, unfussy wine.