One of the idiosyncrasies of the French language is the allocation of nouns as masculine or feminine. Tables are feminine, pencils masculine, word endings which are usually masculine have exceptions and vice versa. It’s a minefield for English speaking people.
Grape varieties are also given a gender, but the vast majority are masculine. Of the major grape varieties only one is feminine, la Syrah. My favourite wine of Jeff Coutelou is 100% Syrah, La Vigne Haute. The grapes come from La Garrigue vineyard on a slope facing north to avoid the hottest direct sunshine.
La Vigne Haute is only made in special years, in other vintages the grapes go into other cuvées. How the 2019 La Garrigue Syrah turns out is yet to be determined but they were harvested on Friday September 6th, Day 6 of the vendanges. The good news is that there was more of the wine than last year, when all the vineyards were hit by mildew. Tasting the juice the following day (pre fermentation) it has an amazing depth of red fruit but also a complexity which might be described as minerality. Of course, the wine will be very different after fermentation but this juice has something special about it.
The following day brought more Syrah into the cellar. This time from Segrairals, the largest of the Coutelou vineyards. Again the bunches came in firm and healthy. Syrah usually has small berries and, in this drought year, that is certainly the case. However the grapes are very healthy, no sign of rot or disease. The Segrairals juice had an overwhelming raspberry fruit flavour, not the more serious notes of La Garrigue but very good in its own right.
The Syrah of Segrairals, after destemming and juice in a glass whilst being sorted by Alain
As one of the five major red grapes of Languedoc Syrah is a crucial part of so many of its best wines. It is an expressive grape, try some of the great Syrahs from the Ardèche for example, to find a huge range of flavours and quality. It makes up around one third of the Coutelou production so the lovely fruit of those two days is a relief and also highly promising that, despite the drought, some great wines will emerge in 2019.
Day 6 Day 7
amarchinthevines 
September 11, 2019 at 1:03 pm
Hi again,
very nice meeting you at Jeff’s last week. Hope you are recovering quickly from your injury.
The piece in the book from Mas Coutelou will be very good I think. Lena has taken some great pictures.
By the way, do you know how old Jeff is? I forgot to ask him.
My email is: mats-eric@talochskrift.se.
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