Domaine Jones Fitou Vieilles Vignes Vineyard Collection – 2022

Katie Jones is a quirky, humorous and very skilled English winemaker who has been making great wine in the Southwest corner of France for over 25 years. She specialises in rescuing neglected plots of extremely old vines and through a combination of passion, hard work and real winemaking talent is able to produce amazing wines from them.

Domaine Jones consists of 15 small plots of vines – all cultivated using organic farming – scattered around the village of Tuchan in the Hautes Corbières, in the southernmost part of the Aude. All Katie’s vines are of a very advanced age (from 30-118 years old) and therefore naturally low-yielding. They all boast hillside locations with breathtaking views of the surrounding wild garrigue. The soils are clay and limestone, interspersed with schist.

Both modern yet deeply rooted in the traditional heritage of the appellation, this Fitou is a blend of 40% Carignan, 30% Grenache and 30% Syrah.

It is dark red in colour with scents of violets and roasted coffee beans. On the palate it is deep, dark and silky smooth in structure. It has a myriad of flavours of blackberries, spices and local wild herbs. It is quite simply a delicious Fitou and possibly the best Katie has made!

100 cases were produced.

“Sometimes, in the middle of a long tasting, you pour another wine on autopilot, lift it to your nose, and stop. It’s an ‘ahhhh’ moment. Just holding the wine to your nose is a wordless moment of appreciation. A kind of: yes. Yes. This is one of those wines. It’s just exactly right. It’s a bowl of plums, freshly picked, still smelling of leaves and flowers and hot stones, some split, smelling of red juice bleeding through the colander, smelling of plum-bruise sweetness and plum-skin sap. It tastes of cherry blossom. Of pomegranate. And rose-petal tea. And jasmine. It tastes of hot summer nights in the garden breathing in the heady fragrance of sun-saturated flowers and the cooling sigh of stones and earth that can finally give up their burden of heat. The tannins a circlet of silk ribbons.” 17.5/20pts and Good Value; Tamlyn Currin MW for jancisrobinson.com