2018 Domaine Courier Cotes Catalane 750 ml

The year was 2006. The small southern French town of Maury, once famed for its dessert wines, was in the midst of a land-consolidation project. With sales for sweet wines waning, the local government paid winemakers to uproot their oldest vineyards and plant orchards instead.

Importer Kimberly Jones—a close friend of ours and one of the top brokers of Napa Valley’s finest bottles—happened to be visiting at the time. She fell in love with the countryside and its wines, and when she got wind of the land-consolidation plan, she snapped up 14 acres of century-old vines before they could be destroyed. She knew viticultural treasures like this were too special and rare to be erased.

Maury experiences some of the hottest, driest conditions in the country, and the flaky, harsh schist soil is as unforgiving as the climate. Yet such merciless conditions are exactly what pushes Grenache to its transcendent best—and Kimberly’s 2018 The Courier Cotes Catalanes is proof. 

Lisa Perotti-Brown, former head of the Wine Advocate, lavished 95-point praise on this bottle in her own publication, and praised its intensity and full-bodied palate—plus its soaring aromatics.

This is a magnificent, powerful expression of old-vine Grenache concentration that wouldn’t exist were it not for the vision of Kimberly Jones. Deep and powerful with a multidimensional richness, the dark-ruby wine bursts with blackberry pie aromas accented by steeped violets, a hint of walnut shells, and pipe tobacco. The mouthfeel is rich and voluptuous, with plenty of fruit, a sanguine note, and a lengthy finish.

“This is the transmission, the expression of those rescued vines,” Kimberly told us as she filled our glasses. “That’s why it’s called ‘The Courier.’” She related the tale as we sat around a firepit at her house in the California desert underneath a blanket of stars. We were riveted by the story—but even more by the wine.