Maison les Alexandrins

Côte - Rôtie

Red 2020

This modern, powerful and complex Côte-Rôtie highlights the Syrah with aromas of black fruits and elegant, velvety tannins.

Granite soil

This wine should be decanted at least an hour before serving. Serve at 17°C. Drink young.

This wine will go wonderfully with tender and tasty lamb.

After the hail damage of 2019, we had to nurse our vineyards back to health with a range of gentle but complementary nutrients. This made 2020 a technically exacting year, especially since the weather reserved many surprises for us. Spring was extraordinarily hot and dry and, despite a short break in June when some welcome rain fell, summer saw a continuation of drought conditions right up until the harvest. With a high risk of mildew at the start of the season, constant and unpredictable winds, powdery mildew half way through the season and the threat of high temperatures and scorching, we were spared nothing, and it required a major effort to cope. Fortunately, the occasional shower, fairly cool nights and morning dew meant the vines did not suffer too much from the summer heat, and all our hard work seems to have paid off with the promise of a fine vintage. To avoid the hottest moments of the day, we began picking from 6 am so as to pick the grapes while they were cool. We began with the whites on August 19 and continued with the reds through until September 16. First tastings revealed aromatic wines of great freshness, with degrees rarely exceeding 13.5°. After so many twists and turns, it is a vintage that reverts to origin in a very “Northern Rhône” style, after the mediterranean vintages of 2018 and 2019.

The granite parent rock is covered in places by schist but also by sand and chalky soil.

Our aim here is to produce consistently refined wines offering elegance and finesse.
- Maceration and fermentation for about 20 days with pumping over for the first few days and then punching down towards the end.
- Ageing for 15 months in one year-old barrels and in demi-muids (60-litre capacity barrels).

Beautiful deep-red colour with shiny reflections. Very elegant, the nose offers a superb aromatic bouquet with aromas of small red fruit punctuated by notes of smoked bacon and cold ash. Plenty finesse on the palate, dense, intense, suave, with silky and velvety tannins and a long finish supported by good acidity. A wine definitely under the sign of elegance.