La Luce is on the loose

Have you had a wine that you expect to be wonderful and it disappoints for various reasons? You might have a corked bottle (excusable) or taste it when it highly reductive, or the wine may just not be open for business. A groupie of Edouard Laffite’s L’Echappée Belle (three bottles in fine fettle) I was durned sure that I was going to fall head over heels in love with La Luce. But it didn’t happen. At least not the first few times.

Laffite’s Le Bout du Monde, a six hectare domaine, is situated in the village of Lansac, in the department of the Pyrenees-Orientales, 28 km north west of Perpignan.  Edouard was formerly winemaker at the local Cave cooperative- La Cave d’Estezargues.  In 2005 he purchased several plots of land from five different farmers and created his small estate (which means “the end of the world” a reference to the utterly remote region in which it is located).

La Luce is 85% Grenache and 15% Syrah from organically grown vines on mixture of gneiss, marl and granite. The grapes, harvested by hand, are destemmed, then placed in a vat, where they are cooled to 5°C before a pre-fermentation maceration of 10 days. The ferment is natural with wild yeasts after which it is aged for about seven months in thrice used Burgundy barrels before being bottled without filtration, fining and only 1g/litre of sulphur.

On this occasion the wine was singing for our supper (grilled lamb cutlets with ratatouille since you ask). It showed a strong purple colour and exuded perfumed fruit, a riot of blackberries and sweet currants. On the palate La Luce was wonderfully invigorating with wild fruits complemented by earthy-savoury notes and sweet smokiness, towed effortlessly along by crunchy minerality and lively acidity. It is what the French might describe as a tonic wine, full of iron, pulsing into your blood, a wine where the bottle empties as the meal progresses, and a second one is demanded.