Clos del Rey L’Aragone Carignan 2022, IGP Côtes Catalanes, Roussillon

L’Aragone is a pure Carignan from Clos del Rey, the Montagné family estate in the village of Maury, in the Roussillon foothills of the Pyrenees. It comes from a single north-facing vineyard on black schist soils, where the cooler exposure helps keep the concentrated old-vine fruit lively and fresh. In the cellar the family takes a low-intervention approach and ages the wine in older oak, so that the character of the vines and the stony site comes through rather than the barrel. Once labelled Côtes du Roussillon Villages, it is now bottled as IGP Côtes Catalanes.

In the glass it is a deep purple with violet tints. The nose is expressive, with ripe, almost jammy red and black fruit, raspberry and blackberry, wrapped in spice, leather, a hint of liquorice and the wild herbs of the garrigue: rosemary, lavender and thyme. The palate is full, rich and structured, with refined, fine-grained tannins and a fresh, long finish.

Serve at around 16–18°C, ideally decanted for an hour when young. It is superb with roast or grilled lamb, beef, game, duck, hearty Catalan-style stews and mature hard cheeses. L’Aragone is approachable now and has the structure to age well for several years.

Clos del Rey is a family estate in Maury, a small village in Roussillon in the foothills of the Pyrenees, close to the Mediterranean. It was created in 2001 by Jacques Montagné, who, as the market for Maury’s traditional fortified wines declined, began buying the best old parcels of Grenache and Carignan he could find so that the vines would have a future. His son Julien, a trained oenologist, joined him in 2007 and now makes the wines. The vineyards lie at around 300 metres, among the highest in the area, in a protected landscape of garrigue, and some of the bush-trained vines are over a century old. Clos del Rey makes only dry wines, with minimal intervention in the cellar, and Decanter’s Andrew Jefford has praised its L’Aragone as the greatest Carignan he has tasted.