Les Genoux, Domaine of the Bee 2020

This is our rare, single-vineyard wine, which is only produced in the best years. Only 852 bottles were made in 2020. The source of the fruit for our 'Les Genoux' cuveé are the wonderful 100+ year-old vines in our ancient Coume de Roy vineyard.

2020 was a year marked by an extremely wet spring with intermittent rain throughout the early summer creating uncharacteristic problems with damp humid conditions. Nevertheless, by the time summer finally arrived, with a lot of moisture in the soil, the vines grew like crazy, and produced a good-sized crop of extremely tasty grapes.

Black schist

This year we ended up with three demi-muids (500 ltr barrels) up-ended with the ends taken out. Two of them were filled with whole bunches, crushed under-foot, and plunged gently by hand, twice or three times a day, during the fermentation.

At pressing, the wine was drained into one 500 ltr Seguin Moreau 'Icone' barrel, and the pressings blended with other Grenache pressings in another 225 ltr barrel. After 15 months of ageing, the two barrels were blended together to create the 2020 Les Genoux cuvée.