2019 Aubert et Mathieu Milo Minervois La Liviniere 750 ml

Anthony Aubert and Jean-Charles Mathieu look more like two guys in a Portland noise rock band than the up-and-coming French winemakers behind some of the Languedoc’s most exciting and brilliant wines.

These brash, young upstarts are shaking up France’s southern scene. Shunning additives, passionate about transparency and organic farming, the pair’s wines have been popping up in some of Paris’s most stylish boîtes—but that barely compares to the big splash: a whopping 97-point score at the Decanter World Wine Awards for their 2019 Aubert et Mathieu Milo cuvée—a Syrah-led bombshell blend from the Languedoc’s most iconic cru, Minervois La Livinière.

Aubert and Mathieu would fit right in at other cool-kid wine regions like Burgundy or the Loire, but their eyes aren’t wandering anywhere else. They’re convinced they’ve got some of the best vineyards in the world in their own backyard—especially in the windblown appellation of Minervois La Livinière, which produced today’s blockbuster release.

This famed sub-region is a perfect cradle for varieties like Syrah, infusing grapes with Northern Rhône-like savoriness, supercharged with Mediterranean sun. Aubert and Mathieu have cultivated relationships with some of the best growers here, favoring sites with higher elevations that are rich in clay, limestone, and chalk soils.

In La Livinière, great acidity is practically a given, but this expression matches vibrancy with loads of black fruit concentration, backed by ripe, grippy tannins. It’s just refined enough to get through the door at Paris’s coolest haunts, but with a sauvage edge that shows it never forgets where it’s from. Points and pedigree—this bottle is the whole package, and it comes at an unbelievable price.