Maison Les Alexandrins Côte Rôtie Rouge - 2023

A partnership between two winegrowers from the Rhône Valley – Nicolas Jaboulet and Alexandre Caso – Maison les Alexandrins produces northern wines in a style at once contemporary and timeless, always from exceptional vineyards unearthed by Alexandre Caso, a specialist in the terroirs of the northern Rhône Valley. Classics with a twist, these wines and how they are aged and blended are guided by the quest for perfect harmony from a very young age. Most of our vines grow in the south of the appellation, in the Côte Blonde and Coteau de Tupin sectors.

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

2023 was a year full of contrasts, which required great composure and experience to deal with the climatic hazards. The winter was mild followed by a wet spring then a summer oscillating between hailstorms and drought, before a complicated harvest period, between August 17 and September 20. A permanent risk of rain and unpredictable weather forecasts required us to constantly adapt our plans in order to harvest our grapes, of good quality and well concentrated in sugars, at their optimal phenolic maturity. At the end of the harvest, the meticulous work was more than rewarded: this very unusual vintage proved to be very promising, perfectly well balanced across all quality indicators. In the cellar, we are pleasantly surprised by the freshness of the whites. The terroirs resisted drought and offer magnificent balance. Low temperature fermentations helped preserve the aromatics. The reds required long macerations in order to extract all the essence of the vintage. The wines from the lowlands are crisp and delicate, the wines from the hills stand out for their density and the radiance brought by the granite. The aging period has now started, the wines will improve and the textures will slowly become more complex in the cellar.

Côte-Rôtie has been an Appellation d'Origine Contrôlée in the northern Rhône Valle since 1940. Starting life on the right bank of the Rhône, Côte-Rôtie wines forge their character from the appellation's extremely steep slopes, which in places reach gradients of over 60°. The very narrow vineyard is planted in terraces just a few dozen vines wide. Only a few kilometres from Lyon, this is the northernmost appellation of the Rhône Valley.

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).