2015 Domaine de la Pertuisane Tetu Cotes Catalanes is sold out.

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Hidden Gem 91-Point Ancient Vine Red

Wine Bottle
  • 92 pts Jeb Dunnuck
    92 pts Jeb Dunnuck
  • 91 pts Wine Advocate
    91 pts RPWA
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2015 Domaine de la Pertuisane Tetu Cotes Catalanes 750 ml

Sold Out

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  • Curated by unrivaled experts
  • Choose your delivery date
  • Temperature controlled shipping options
  • Get credited back if a wine fails to impress

Dazzling Châteauneuf-du-Pape Style Red

Dazzling Châteauneuf-du-Pape Style Red

Walking along the rough lanes that lead to Domaine de la Pertuisane, wild sage, lavender, and the entire range of “herbs de Provence” overflow into the roadway, perfuming the air and providing a blanket of green camouflage over the area’s signature schist soils. The obsidian-black stones break like glass underfoot, hinting that there’s more than untamed foliage covering the rolling landscape. The delicate black stones form the backbone of Maury’s robust, structured reds, like today’s 2015 Tetu Red, a bottle Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate called a “beauty,” in a 91-point rave which offers up “loads of sweet red fruits,” and “exotic spices,” concluding it is “about as drinkable as they come. Count me as a fan and it's a terrific value." At $20, Parker wasn’t exaggerating about the value angle on this wine, it easily competes with French reds twice the price.

The well-sheltered village of Maury is also proving irresistible to Napa’s top winemakers like Abe Schoener, Dave Phinney, and star importer Kimberly Jones—the mastermind behind today’s Tetu. The 2015 Cotes Catalanes Tetu is the product of sheer determination coupled with the sublime talent of winemaker Richard Case, who owns Domaine Pertuisane with his wife Sarah, and partnered with Jones on this release. The result is a showstopping, opulent, Chateauneuf-du-Pape style Grenache that we can’t put down.

The story began for Jones in 2006 when she headed to France with winemaking phenom Abe Schoener, a story she told while filling my glass with the dense, delicious red,  “I visited with Abe, who was smitten with the area’s 100-year old Carignane and 60-80-year-old Grenache vines, which was all being used to make sweet Maury Sec wines! The French government was offering the locals money to rip up the vines and to plant apricots.”

But Jones wouldn’t have it. She saved the money and bought 7.4 acres of thick-trunked, ancient vines, which stand knee-high in sharp, black schist soils in the shadow of a ruined 13th-century castle, where Maury’s hidden terroir rises up between the jagged Pyrenees and the Mediterranean Sea. It’s an incredible deal, from one of the world’s last undiscovered wine regions.

This opulent old-vine Grenache that resulted from Jones’ savvy purchase combines mouth-filling ripe wild strawberry and black raspberry fruit with leather, garrigue, olive, and crushed rock flavors, with a mesmerizing blackberry and savory herb finish. Supple tannins are bracketed by chiseled schist-soil minerality and mouthwatering acidity. Tetu is a masterful blend of estate fruit from 60- to 80-year old vines rooted in the rugged, otherworldly hills of Maury, that drinks like a top-flight Châteauneuf-du-Pape, but is in a class all its own.

The first vintages of Tetu (2013 and 2014) were smash hits in Europe, poured by the glass at Michelin-3-Star restaurants including Spain’s famous 3-star Arzak in San Sebastián.