Domaine du Cayron Gigondas - French Soul You Can Afford

Old school Rhône wine.  Thick and soupy, stick to your ribs, gray overcast weather type shit.  Cooking all day, house smelling good, umami for days.

With a mix of rich, pan-sauced blackberries, choco-cherries and greener elements like peppercorn and garrigue-y herbs (salty, resinous, aromatic wild herb aromas and flavors), the 2021 Domaine du Cayron Gigondas gives you a taste of the culmination of decades of optimizing a wine’s flavor to complement the region’s country cuisine. 

This is a fall and winter wine for those recipes you have been waiting on all year.

The Southern Rhône reds have always famously been a blend of Grenache, Syrah and Mourvedre. Blended together, they are more than the sum of their parts - but recent changes in global tastes have led to cleaner, fruitier, less individual wines.  

It’s not a bad thing - give me choices!  There are beautiful wines on the transparent side and then big, dumb delicious milkshake Rhônes on the other end.

Yet I do find myself missing the carnivorousness of classic Rhône wines, which is becoming a bit tougher to find.  Where’s my bloody, bacony, figgy, coffee country stew of a wine?  The Southern Rhone should be The Source for meaty, savory wines that you can stand a fork in.  I don’t want filthy brett bombs but can I have a little paysan juice?

The signature taste of these Grenache blends is "slow-cooked", rich, developed....that beautiful mix of fruit gastrique, simmered herbs, meat drippings and stone lickin’s.  Cayron was one of the first wines that gave me the “oh now that’s a fucking wine, not just fruit juice” moment almost twenty years ago.  I’m glad that it’s still serious as hell nowadays.  

Cayron’s Gigondas is a blend of old-vine, organic Grenache, Syrah, Carignan and Mourvedre from high-altitude vineyards.  Whole cluster fermentation.  Unfined and unfiltered.  Aged in concrete and old large foudre barrels.  One wine only, made by three sisters. I love this shit.

Hopefully useful information:  Imported in the USA by Skurnik Wines, Roanoke Valley Wine Company, Vin de Garde and others.