2017 Mas de Daumas Gassac Vin de Pays de l'Herault

A blend that is, according to the tech sheet provided to me, 78% Cabernet Sauvignon, 5% Merlot, 5% Cabernet Franc, 4% Petit Verdot, 2% Malbec, 2% Pinot Noir, 4% Barbera, Nebbiolo, Dolcetto, Armigne, Arenie, Bastardo, Saperavi, Tchkaveri, Montepulciano, Areni Noir, Tchekavesi, Sousón , Brancalleo, Carmenère, Abouriou and Plavac Mali (I haven't even heard of some of these varieties!). Average age of vines is 42 years. Picked between 2 and 13 September. Aged in oak. 82,000 bottles and 3,000 magnums made. TA 3.59, pH 3.54. The perfume on this wine, beautiful to begin with, became more and more and more hauntingly lovely as it sat in the glass. I left it and just kept coming back, and every time there was something else there. Lovage, roses, the smell of the most delicious deeply composty loamy soil damp with light rain, lavender. It rose out of the glass in a slow, languid cloud. It took me ages to taste it and when I did, it was ripe damsons, tobacco leaf, dried cranberries, rose petals, a touch of hot-summer-dry garrigue. The fruit was lustrous, almost pearlescent, reverberating gently, held lightly in exquisitely fine but strong tannins. Silk and dust. This is a wine that plumbs the depths of flavour and timbre. Exhilarating yet quiet, intense yet unshowy, effortlessly elegant. One of the most beautiful Languedoc wines I have tasted. And still so young … this has  years  ahead of it. (TC)

100% Syrah on clay-limestone. 12 months in used barriques, 1,200 bottles made. Has a 'fruits of the forest'/Ribena smell on the nose. Juicy berry fruit, slender but wiry tannins and a touch of tea-leaf dust. A pretty grace note of potpourri hovers above the finish. There is a fine sift of pepper through the shapely, pure-throated fruit and all in all this is a very elegant Syrah for the princely sum of €11!  GV (TC)

Tasted from tank a couple of weeks prior to bottling, the 2017 IGP Saint Guilhem le Desert is a promising vintage. Spicy oak accents cassis and cherries in this medium to full-bodied wine. It's silkier than the 2016 yet appears at least as concentrated and perhaps longer on the finish.