Atelier des Sources, Faugeres 2013

50% Syrah, 50% Cinsault

Tyrrell & Barnett buy the fruit and provide the tanks and then the wine is made to their specification. This region, the Faugeres, an area they feel is possibly the greatest of all the Languedoc appellations. The grapes come from two separate vineyard locations, the Syrah on sand in the lower part of the appellation and the Cinsault from a very small parcel on schist just to the north of Autignac. The wine was then vinified at Domaine la Sarabande. The grapes were de-stemmed and crushed and extraction was done by gentle, daily pump overs and cap submersion but no punch downs. After malolactic the wine was left over winter in tank and was bottled in June. It was bottled unfined and unfiltered.

Ateliers des Sources is a project that has been about twenty years in the making. Mark Barnett is a very old friend of Simon’s with whom he lived in France many years ago and together always talked of doing a wine project together (although he is not in the wine business but actually works for MasterCard). We looked for a long time at different ventures before finally settling on a small production company focused on doing Languedoc wines.  2400 bottles produced.