Once upon a wine…
In 1984, to celebrate his golden wedding anniversary with his wife Franca, Count Giuseppe Tasca d'Almerita decided to develop a new wine, Nozze D'Oro - literally, the Golden Wedding - combining Inzolia grapes from his Barbabietole vineyard, and a white grape known by local growers as the "Tasca" variety.
It wasn’t an indigenous grape, but it had been cultivated in a number of the estate's vineyards since the 1920s. Towards the end of the '80s, however, it was discovered that the Tasca grapes were derived from Sauvignon Blanc, giving rise to the denomination "Sauvignon Tasca". That’s when the decision was taken to selectively breed the grape.
At the end of the 1990s, terroir analysis was carried out throughout the estate. The results enabled the creation of new vineyards in 1998 with the best possible conditions, in terms of soil and microclimate, for the cultivation of Sauvignon Tasca vines. Since 2004, Nozze d'Oro has been produced with Inzolia grapes from the historic Barbabietole vineyard, and with the Tasca sub-variety of Sauvignon Blanc from the new vineyards.
The 2020 harvest had a mild winter, followed by a dry, temperate spring and a hot summer which was disrupted by abundant rainfall in July. The two grape varieties reached maturation slightly earlier than usual; Inzolia was harvested on in early September and "Sauvignon Tasca" in mid-August. The result is a brightly colored wine with a complex aroma and floral notes like orange blossoms and white flowers. The bouquet is amplified by the wine's freshness, imparting great complexity and structure.
Edgar Dufès Successeurs (fr. successors) is an estate of 3.5 hectares located in Langlade, a village a few kilometers west of Nimes. The family has owned and operated a vineyard here for a long time, but around the turn of the millennium the activity fell flat - grapes were produced, but no wine was bottled on their own property. At this time, Rémy Pédréno, a former IT engineer and wine enthusiast who had apprenticed with René Rostaing and Yves Gras (Domaine Santa Duc), wanted to set up his own domaine near Nimes, the city of his birth. He met at Elisabeth van der Bent who told him about Langlade’s famous wine history and in 1999 he made his first wine at Domaine Roc d’ Anglade. Inspired by Rémy, Elisabeth started making wine herself, and in 2001 her first vintage came on the market.
When the retired doctor, now winemaker here, Elisabeth van der Bent asks her mother Eliane, the over a hundred-year-old former winemaker, for advice, she always gets the answer “fait-moi un vin vieux bourguignon.”
The best way to approach Eliane’s message is to know the position the wines from the municipality of Langlade had in the old days. Langlade is an area that was already recognized for its wine quality in the time of Louis the Fourteenth. The wines from here were served at court, under the vineyard area designation Vieux Langlade and referred to as Grand Cru. Later, in the middle of the 19th century, the village was mentioned in the Dictionnaire Statistiques de la France in the same breath as the villages of the Côte d’Or: Vosne-Romanée, Puligny-Montrachet, Nuits St. Georges, Volnay.
Langlade’s status was such that a train station and a post office were built in the village of 650 inhabitants and approximately the same number of hectares of vineyards, only to serve the export of the wines from there. Around 1870, the activity in the village was at its peak, those who did not grow wine were bookkeepers. In 1878, phylloxera appeared. All vineyards disappeared. 200 ha of vineyards were replanted around 1900, but the damage had been done, Vieux Langlade was forgotten.
So, when Eliane says what she wants, it’s not about imitating a wine from another place, it says something about how they see themselves, their pride in their own terroir and its historical position. Langlade may not be in Burgundy, but bourguignon still defines the village’s status, wine’s place in the hierarchy. Langlade is not the neighboring village of Vosne, it is a full 430 km further south, but in the history of those who live there it is just as much bourguignon.
So, what does a vieux bourguignon or a Vieux Langlade taste like? Quite unique. The wine really doesn’t resemble anything else from Languedoc or Southern Rhône. Although the wine is obviously made from fully ripe grapes, the alcohol percentage is only 12.5 to 13%. Aromatically or visually, there is also nothing to suggest a lot of sun and a warm climate. It is deep red in color, with some browning at the edge for the oldest wines. The aroma picture is cool and complex with a mix of fresh and dried berries, tea, aromatic herbs, raw potato, meat, leather, increasing hints of tobacco with age. In the mouth, the wine is full of energy, the wine is firm, but the tannins are very fine. Some associations go in the direction of mature Bordeaux, some in the direction of mature Grenache, some in the direction of old school Rioja, but most of all this reminds us of a .... mature Burgundy!
