2016 Domaine Cabirau Serge & Nicolas Maury Sec 750 ml

Dunnuck’s “Smoking Value”

Perennially recognized by critics as one of Southern France’s best value reds, the 2016 Domaine Cabirau Serge & Nicolas Maury Sec is an under-$20 blockbuster. “Another terrific vintage from this estate,” raves Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate with a 91-93 point score. Parker’s longtime Rhône reviewer Jeb Dunnuck cemented it as a must-buy with 93 points, calling it “medium-bodied, silky and polished, with beautiful purity” and advising readers: “it’s going to be a smoking value.” This harmonious red from 35- to 70-year-old vines in the wild hills of Maury drinks like top-flight Châteauneuf-du-Pape at a fraction of the price. Just $19.99 for a total beauty that will go fast.

Touring Dan Kravitz’s vineyards in Maury, deep in the South of France, you sometimes feel as though you’re walking on another planet. The soil is sharp, obsidian-black schist, sliding away beneath your feet like shattered glass. Thick-trunked, ancient vines thrust out of the ground like gnarled fingers. The cold, dry Tramontane wind, which can reach 80 mph, howls across steep rock pinnacles and sheer cliffs.

Thanks to his import business, Hand Picked Selections, Kravitz was well-versed in this rugged region’s ability to produce extraordinary value-priced wines. In 2007, he purchased 13.5 acres of Grenache, including a prized 3.5 plot of 60-year-old vines, beneath the towering Château de Queribus, a ruined 13th century castle. The importer would go on to expand his holdings to 18 acres, adding old-vine Carignan and Syrah, tended by local grower Serge Soulatge. Nicolas Burger, vigneron for the acclaimed cooperative Les Vignerons de Tautavel Vingrau, took over winemaking duties.

In vintage after vintage, the results have blown critics away, with Wine Advocate declaring: “these efforts by Dan Kravitz…overdeliver in terms of quality and value. They offer loads of character and need to be sought out by savvy readers.”

Tasted blind, the 2016 Domaine Cabirau Serge & Nicolas Maury Sec could easily equal or best any number of Châteauneuf-du-Papes. But Kravitz’s aim was never to duplicate Rhône wines — these Roussillon releases are in a class of their own. The voluptuous old-vine Grenache and darkly concentrated Carignan offer full-throttle, high-toned dark fruit, braced by chiseled schist-soil backbone. Distilling the wild Catalonian landscape — west of the dark-blue Mediterranean Sea, just north of the border with Spain — this Grenache-based wine is marked by the same fiercely independent spirit as Maury’s inhabitants.

As with previous cuvées, Wine Advocate was full of praise, awarding 91-93 points and proclaiming it “another terrific vintage from this estate.” Jeb Dunnuck, putting up 93 points, was even more emphatic, writing: “it’s medium-bodied, silky and polished, with beautiful purity, solid mid-palate density and building depth and length. There’s just a little over 1,000 cases and is going to be a smoking value.”

Only a fraction of those 1,000 cases will make their way stateside, and today, 35 cases are up for grabs for a very short time today.