“Rien Que du Carignan”, Vin de France

Just as his friend Guillaume Gilles stepped outside his home zone in recent years to bottle a Gamay, Ludovic recently gained access to a friend’s parcel of 95-year-old Carignan in the schist of Saint-Chinian, in the Languedoc, bottling it for the first time with the 2021 harvest and christening it “Rien Que du Carignan” (“Nothing But Carignan”). They produce only about 11 hectoliters of wine—fermented naturally and aged in a combination of used demi-muid and used barrique—from this ancient half-hectare parcel. Punchily spicy yet beguiling in its purity of fruit, this is deeply mineral Carignan that flirts with downright elegance.