Domaine LaFage La Retro Les Annees Folles 2021 (1L)

 

Rated 91 Points by Decanter Magazine

 

Light and juicy, with upfront cherry and strawberry aromas.  It has been harvested early to give more red fruit flavours, more acidity, and less of an overcooked profile.  It works well, the palate has a crunchy cherry skin quality, and it’s easy to drink, succulent, and could even be chilled down and enjoyed with salads and light barbeque fare.  N.E.

 

Domaine LaFage La Retro Les Annees Folles 2021

Light ruby ​​red color with brilliant reflections.  Spicy and subtly fruity nose.  The palate is supple, fresh and light, slightly spicy, with a nice balance.

 

Origin:  France

 

Appellation:  Vin de France

 

Soil:  Alluvial gravel, clay-limestone, schist

 

Age of Vines:  20-50+ Years

 

Elevation:  15-300 Meters

 

Farming:  Certified Sustainable

 

Fermentation:  Hand harvested, lightly crushed, co-fermentation in tank with a short maceration

 

Aging:  A few months in tank before bottling

 

Grapes:  Carignan, Lladoner, Grenache Noir and Grenache Gris.

 

Grenache for the jubilant fruit, Carignan to keep it fresh, Grenache Gris to lighten things up, and Lladoner.  What’s Lladoner?  It’s only 3%, so really, who cares, but if you’ve read this far, you’re probably the sort that likes details.  Lladoner is Grenache with fuzzy leaves and smaller clusters of fruit.  It is generally spicier and less flash than its smooth-leaf cousin.  Genetically it is identical to Grenache, but some genes were scrambled in the past resulting in these changes. Like all things this obscure, it has a cult following.

 

The Wine

 

La Rétro has been in the works for a few years after tasting some experimental cuvées with Jean-Marc Lafage.  Years ago, his father and grandfather sold most of their grapes to the local cooperative to be made into vin doux.  After these grapes had been picked, his extended family would gather together to harvest those parcels that never quite reached the maturity levels required to sell them profitably.  These sites were out of the way, sheltered, inauspiciously situated, and slow to ripen.  And the style of wine made from them was satisfying, moderate in alcohol, light in body, and with a juicy fruit expression that perfectly suited family meals and everyday drinking.  This was when wine was less of a lifestyle and more an integral part of a well-balanced life.

 

La Rétro is a recreation of a style of wine from the last century.

 

La Rétro is so unpretentious and joyful that we could think of no better way to capture this than putting it in our first 1-liter bottle.  Usually, we’d take a moment at this point to trace the history of the 1L bottle from the Weinviertel of Austria to the bottleshops shops of Paris, San Francisco, Copenhagen, and Brooklyn.

 

But that isn’t La Rétro.

 

Retro isn’t about current history but the past.  Nowadays, most people understand that a 1L bottle means fun, exuberant, uncomplicated pleasure.  La Rétro is made from those same slow-to-ripen vineyards in the back country of the Roussillon – Les Fenouillades.

 

On a recent visit, we travelled from Maury where the grapes were rich and dense with dark fruit flavors that coated your palate.  A short distance away over a mountain pass, we arrived at Les Fenouillades.  The black schist soils had been replaced with chalky limestone mixed with large pieces of quartz, marble and granite.  The temperatures had dropped and the morning fog was still clinging to the pine covered slopes all around us.  Here the grapes were still crackling with acidity.  Ripe with red fruit peppery and herbal flavors intertwined – this is the fruit for Rétro and its moderate alcohol somewhere in the vacinity of 12%.

 

Made mainly from Grenache (60%), La Rétro includes a healthy portion of Carignan (30%), a little Grenache Gris (7%), and a touch of Lladoner (3%).  As the grapes are picked and brought to the cellar, they are lightly crushed and placed whole-cluster into a fermentation vat for a short spontaneous fermentation with minimal extraction.  After pressing, it is kept in tank until bottling.  This is just how Jean-Marc’s father and grandfather made wines for their family a half century ago.  But, rather than tell you what we think it tastes like, I’ll leave you with this amusing opinion from Tamlyn Currin of jancisrobinson.com wrote when she was first introduced to the 2020 La Rétro:

 

Cheeky, cheeky, cheeky! Ping-pongs around the mouth, paintballing cherry wine gums and raspberry fruit chews and Parma-violet candy in all directions. (Don’t get me wrong, though – the wine is dry, not sweet; just so packed with such cheerful fruit that it’s like being flash-mobbed by singing strawberries!) The tannins are not even an afterthought. They were abandoned in the press along with all pretensions and all thoughts of tomorrow.  I love it!

 

 

Domaine LaFage

 

For twenty years, we have worked with Jean-Marc Lafage at his estate in the Roussillon and across the border in Spain, where he consults on several projects.  As good as his wines were when we first met him, they only get better with each vintage. 

 

While his family has been growing grapes and making wine in the Roussillon since 1791, it was Jean-Marc’s early insight into the potential for the Roussillon to make a wide range of dry wines at very affordable prices that established his “new” estate.  While his grandfather and father made wine for the family, Jean-Marc was the first to break away from selling most of his grapes to the local cooperative.  Over the generations, his family had amassed scattered vineyards throughout the region, which now totals over 160 hectares of vines, most of them in excess of 50 years in age. 

 

Another factor in Jean-Marc’s success is the diversity of the terroirs in the Roussillon.  Squeezed between the far southern edge of the limestone Corbières Massif to the north and the granitic Pyrenees mountains in the south, the Roussillon is an undulating terrain of complex soil types, orientations, and exposures.  Three river valleys, the Agly, Têt, and Tech, drain the region generally flowing west to east, where they meet the Mediterranean.  Within its borders, Jean-Marc has identified six principal sub-zones in the appellation: the Crest, the Upper Agly Valley, the Uplands of Fenouillet, Les Asprès, the Mediterranean Plain, the Rocky Coast.  Each region has its own expression and when you factor in the various varieties Jean-Marc has planted, you can understand why he can make so many riveting wines at such reasonable prices.