Chateau Coupe-Roses is a small family owned winery run by the husband and wife team of Pascal and Françoise Frissant-Le Calvez. This couple is passionate, dedicated and intensely “French”. The Cave is located in the historic Occitan village of La Caunette.  This medieval village is surrounded by limestone caves and mountains, with old terraced vineyards surrounding a spectacular limestone gorge.  The unique combination of calcareous marls, high altitude and old vines makes for superb conditions to produce intensely aromatic Syrah. I first tried these wines by accident (purchased at a local Minervois grocery store) and it took me almost two weeks to track down the owners, (not to mention finding the place) for a meeting, but was it worth it! The truly unique part of this operation is the spectacular old vines which go into making the “Orience” Syrah. The vineyards are over 50 years old, trained goblet style and you could swear you could taste the limestone mineral character in the wine.  The winery itself is fairly straight forward, with modern stainless tanks and solid cooperage but with a state of the art bottling/labeling line! It turns out that the wines are exported all over the world…nothing stays a secret forever.  

Wines from this Winery:

Orience 2006

 

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Orience 2006

This Syrah is taken from old vineyards tucked above the historic village of La Caunette. Limestone caves and subsoils dominant this unique area and the minerality definitely comes through from these calcareous soils. The wine is deeply coloured and super peppery, with almost floral overtones and a flinty complexity. The palate is full bodied, with fine grained tannins, peppery black fruit, good acidity and a long chalky finish.  Cellar 4-12 years. 95 points