Gigondas Le Poste, Château de Saint Cosme 2022
Parker 98 (2024); Wine Advocate 98 (2024)
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Why this wine
Le Poste is the parcel around the family chapel, on terraces documented since 1443 and replanted by Louis Barruol's father in 1963 — the cuvée he is most personally attached to. It is the darkest and most structured of the estate's Gigondas, all iodine, pepper and ash rather than sweet fruit. Certified organic, and one of the benchmark single-vineyard wines of the southern Rhône.
At a glance
- Grape
- Grenache
- Region
- Rhône Valley, France
- Alcohol
- 15.50%
- Body
- Full
- Acidity
- Medium
- Tannins
- Medium
- Sweetness
- Dry
- Drink
- Medium (5-10 yrs)
- Pairs with
- Red Meat, Barbecue, Cheese
How it tastes
Iodine, violet, black pepper and a trace of ash sit over dark fruit, smoky rather than sweet. Full-bodied and firmly built, with good acidity and refined tannins holding the 15.5% in balance. Grenache 100%.
The producer
Château de Saint Cosme sits in Gigondas in the southern Rhône and has been in the Barruol family for over 500 years; Louis Barruol took over from his father in 1992 and is known among the region's winemakers as the 'Genius of Gigondas', bottling individual old-vine plots separately to show what the terroir can do. Le Poste is the historic vineyard wrapped around the Saint Cosme chapel, four terraces of Tortonian limestone marl with three planted to Grenache and one to Clairette; the site is documented from 1443, when it was in the hands of Orange royalty, and passed to the Barruol ancestor Esprit Vaton in 1490, while Gallo-Roman vines were probably growing less than a hundred metres from today's vats in the first century. Louis' father Henri replanted the terraces in 1963. The cuvée was fermented with wild yeasts and minimal intervention, then aged twelve months in French oak casks of which 20% were new, 50% second passage and 30% third; the wine is certified organic. In 2022 a long heat wave and drought slowed growth and ripening, and the reds came in balanced, with good fruit and fine tannins.
Food and drinking
Serve at 16 to 18°C. Try it with barbecued lamb, grilled ribeye, oxtail, game birds or a hard mountain cheese. Drinking from now to around 2032; give it an hour and a half in a decanter. Suitable for vegetarians and vegans.