I drank a bottle of Herve Souhaut Saint Epine over the weekend with the notes below from instagram @burakwinenotes . Does anyone know how he achieves such low alcohol in such a ripe vintage?
From Instagram @burakwinenotes
2019 Sainte Epine by Hervé Souhaut (Domaine Romaneaux-Destezet) , BYOB at local pub. (Glass: mediocre one)
Hervé Souhaut has long been celebrated in natural wine circles globally, gaining wider recognition in the UK more recently. Saint-Joseph is a tricky AOC to navigate - its massive expansion in the 1960s also absorbed Cotes du Rhone land with less favourable hillside sites. The best wines still come from the heart of the AOC, originally composed of six villages (now expanded to 26). Sainte Epine is one of these original villages, situated on extremely steep hillsides with vines over 100 years old.
Syrah is often associated with power and heavily extracted wines with big tannins. But to me, truly beautiful Syrah is about restraint and purity. Hervé Souhaut’s Sainte Epine has an undeniable intensity of fruits such as mulberries and spice, but what stands out most is its “weightlessness” - that is the one word that I would use to describe this wine. Yes, it has both fruit and structure, yet it feels almost ethereal. That’s not to say it lacks tannins; they are there, but they are fine, fine tannins. And the alcohol? At just 12.5%, it’s remarkable for a hot vintage like 2019. Bravo!
Old own rooted vines would be my guess. I love the wines. The vineyard has 50-100 year old own rooted vines on a steep slope perfect for making a lower abv wine that is ripe and complex.
Yup. Delicious stuff. Always amazes me how some unique producers are able to accomplish exactly that, and the wines shine so aromatically. Metras and Rayas being some of the best examples. And this reminds me, I need to buy more Souhaut. Love their gamay.
I appreciate some consumers believe his wines may be too “natural” at times and unpredictable (same with Metras), but it’s a risk I’m willing to take.
(Never managed to taste Rayas, i think that boat has sailed for me)
Thank you all, it feels like people have quite mixed feedback on the consistency. For what it’s worth, this reminds me of a long (very long) discussion with a waiter at 4850 (very good list for evenings) in Amsterdam, where he ended up coravining me 3 glasses of Joly’s Coulee de Serrant from 3 different bottles - same vintage, same wine. One singing, one over the top, one totally oxidized. A very expensive experiment…
Glad to hear that Souhaut is still going strong. I remember loving the early vintages from the 1990s when it was all new and fresh and a bit of a revolutionary approach. Then things seemed to get unstable and I stopped following. But my memory of the wines was that the fruit and texture combination was absolutely gorgeous.
In my experience the “too natural” quality in these wines really has a lot to do with how they are handled. They do not react well with lots of air, had a bottle open on my counter for a week got home one night after work not thinking about how long it was open and the taste absolutely wrecked my mouth full on mouse-y. However the same bottle was great upon opening. One thing I have done in the past that has worked really well is coravining a small taste out of the bottle and then opening it about a month later and the small amount of air really helps the wine open without going mouse-y. Rayas has never gone that direction for me
Sure, it’s definitely a given that many extreme naturalist wines can and will turn mousy after air exposure. I myself would never even imagine keeping a no-SO2 wine open for more than a day, let along a week.
However, my experience with Souhaut’s wines are with wines that have been open for mere minutes or maybe an hour. They’ve been marred by mouse from the beginning - not just after air exposure. That’s too unreliable in my books.
I’d be surprised had Rayas gone mousy. They’re traditionalists for sure, but I think they use pretty standard amounts of SO2, meaning they’re well protected from THP.
I am highly sensitive to mouse and I have probably had 50+ bottles of Souhaut and I don’t typically think of them as having a bad problem with mouse. I am going to crack some to check in on more recent bottlings and will report back.
I, on the other hand, have only a much more limited experience with Souhaut wines. I don’t think they have a bad problem with mouse, but when you’ve had only a handful of wines and several of them have had excessively high levels of acetic VA or some mousiness with air exposure, you really don’t want to keep on digging just to see whether this is actually the hit/miss ratio or if you just had bad luck with the bottles!
My friend Thibeau used to put 30, 60 and 90 with a mouse on his wine list at Restaurant 108 in Copenhagen. That was how long you had to drink the wine before mouse emerged! It was just for select wines not all but I loved it.
i’ve had probably a dozen of his wines with at least one bottle from every vintage 15-22 and haven’t had any issues with mouse, even with some being open for a few days. are there particular bottlings that people find to be more mousey?
I vaguely remember reading that he was trying to rehab older vineyard sites outside of the saint joseph aoc (towards the top of the slope/a little west of the aoc boundary), does anyone know if there are plans to introduce them as additional single vineyard wines or if they make it into any of the other cuvees?