A Saint-Chinian with excellent chi
2008 Saint-Chinian, Cuvee Olivier, Domaine Thierry Navarre
Thierry Navarre’s domaine is situated in Roquebrun in Saint-Chinian. The achingly beautiful countryside is an amphitheatre of small mountains clad in a sea of green, a forest of small trees and bushes and the familiar clumps of fragrant rosemary and thyme which captures the scented spirit of the high Languedoc. The culture in the vines revolves around the respect for the soil, the cycles, the seasons. No chemical products are used, simply composting, natural preparation, plant infusions and working the soil. The harvest is manual and carried out by a small team.
Like many vignerons in Languedoc Thierry inherited his passion from his father, and from his grandfather before that. One of the winery signs (just before the bridge across the river Orb that leads into Roquebrun) is an old one, it would seem from the days he and his father worked together. He has inherited something else, a terroir of brown schist with wonderful potential to produce wines of enduring quality. He knows this land intimately, has studied its geology in detail, and cares for it in a way that reflects the heritage and culture of Languedoc, stretching back through the years when the inhabitants spoke just that, the langue d’oc, the historic language of Occitan.
The thin soil of his 13 hectares is exclusively brown schist. It is very permeable to rainfall, forcing the roots of the vines deep in search of moisture, where they also find the coolness to withstand the intense heat of the Languedoc summer. The surface schist reflects the sunlight onto the vines, allowing steady maturing of the fruit. September brings the harvest, careful selection of the best grapes by hand. Vinification and bottling follow in the buildings just off the road into Roquebrun.
The Cuvee Olivier is named after Thierry’s son and might be considered the top cuvee of the domaine. However, it is not a powerful top cuvee for the sake of it, rather an expression of the potential of the soil and a realization of the vintage. When we speak of terroir we speak of the aspiration of the grower to bottle the je ne sais quoi of their locality. It comes across more profoundly in certain wines rather than others; it is partly capturing that sense of light and shade, picking up those earthy, herbal notes and maintaining a balance in the mouth between the matter of the wine and its freshness. You know you are in the hands of a skilled vigneron when the attraction to the wine lasts throughout the bottle, from beginning to the very end. This is truly flavoured by the land, enriched by it. To be sure the depth of the scarlet fruit is there, from its colour in the glass, to the aromas and taste, but beyond that is a polished earthiness, a sense of the schist that is both profound and wonderfully integrated with the other properties of the grapes. Its concentration makes for a wine mature in its attitude, not overwhelming, but rather, content in offering the taster a pure, yet complex expression of the terroir from which it came.
This tripartite blend of very old Carignan vines with Grenache and Syrah Cuvee Olivier is aged in 600-litre demi-muids. The colour is deep red with blueish-tints. The nose offers up a wonderful panoply of smells ranging from blood orange, plums and black cherry to roast herbs, menthol and marinated olives. Warm in the mouth, huge fruits with some skins thrown in for crunch, and lovely savoury notes of herbs and spices complete a Saint-Chinian that is drinking very well now, but will age happily for another three to five years. We drank it with a spicy chicken liver and tomato sauce with pasta.