Everyone’s favorite martyr returns!  Poor Saint Damien, dead since 287, is now known as the patron saint of doctors, and his visage graces the label of one of the most exciting wineries in the southern Rhone Valley……..

80% Grenache, 15% Carignan, 5% Mourvèdre. Domaine Saint-Damien is in Gigondas, and is owned by the Saurel family who farm 24 hectares, half of which are in Gigondas proper. In addition to making a stable of really great, meticulously crafted Gigondas cuvees, they make several cuvees of really delicious, quite serious Cotes du Rhone too.  All of the wines here are real old school efforts that rely on ripe (but not over-ripe) fruit fermented and aged in old casks and concrete tanks.  There’s no screwing about with new wood, high alcohols or flashy winemaking technique.  2022 is another classic vintage that produced classic wines and, at a property like this, they are classics indeed!  The vintage brought with it beautifully defined fruit, great levels of natural acidity and rich, robust tannins.  Mature vines made particularly intense wines.  The Plan de Dieu is sourced particularly old vines from the lower terraces of a single vineyard in the commune of Violès and brings forth lifted aromatics that are packed with black Provencal olives, fresh black truffle, bitter chocolate, white pepper and some clove-y spice to go along with a mouthful of hoisin sauce, plum jam, black cherry and garrigue-tinged earthy, herbs and spices.  It’s a Cotes du Rhone Villages that drinks like a Gigondas; a bottle now to serve with that Thanksgiving turkey, beef or lamb dishes or, better still, you can hide a few bottles deep in a dark cool place and let it do its thing for a few more years.  Very highly recommended.