Domaine Sarabande: A ‘Flying Winemaker’
from Down Under lands in Faugères

A vineyard named after a somewhat risqué dance from 16th-century Spain that reappeared two centuries later as a stately court dance is the latest stop on The Vine Route.

The Sarabande, a triple-time dance with the accent on the second beat, was originally danced by a double line of couples accompanied by castanets and tambourines. Some apparently indecent gestures got it branded as being disreputable in 16th-century Spain, but it later reappeared in early 17th-century Italy as a slow, serious, processional Baroque dance that took the French court by storm.

Without suggesting in any manner that there’s an analogy somewhere in the Domaine Sarabande name chosen by the Australian-Irish couple Paul and Isla Gordon for their Faugères vineyard and their wine career paths, I can’t help draw some comparisons. He—the “down-under” portion of the couple—came to winemaking from bartending and wine retailing, first in Australia and then in London. He then earned a Bachelor of Wine Science from Charles Stuart University in Wagga Wagga, Australia (now, if those medieval Spaniards were dismayed by a fast dance beat, imagine what they might have thought of a place called Wagga Wagga; “Just what are they wagging there?). This led into his becoming, as he explained, “a Flying Winemaker,” making wine in Australia, Oregon, Spain, France and New Zealand, where he met the aptly named Isla of the Emerald Isle.

After having grown up on a farm in Ireland, she studied Agriculture at a university there. She met Paul while on a backpacking trip in New Zealand and decided to stay there. Isla eventually went to work at Kim Crawford Wines, which makes some of New Zealand’s finest wines.

Apart from the Wagga Wagga thing, there’s nothing at all really scandalous here: just a young couple exploring life and searching for their career paths. But those with a good ear might detect how the Gordon’s lives, like the lives of most young couples, went through a meter change at some point. Much like the Sarabande went from a rapid, triple-time dance to a slower, 3/2-meter processional dance, the young couple were ready to slow down things somewhat and to settle down. They first considered setting up a vineyard in Spain’s Priorat region, but decided, for various reasons, that it wasn’t the right place. So they went to the Languedoc, another wine region with Grenache and Carignan grapevines (both of them are avowed enthusiasts of these two grape varieties). “Why Faugères?, I asked them. Paul Gordon’s eyes lit up with the excitement that can only be conveyed in a winemaker’s eyes when talking about rocks. “It’s the schist,” he said, with the same sort of conviction that others might talk about schools, or museums or health-care facilities having drawn them to a particular city.

Oh, schist!
Like the Priorat, Faugères is blessed with this unique sort of fractured shale with a pH that is nearly neutral (most shale is highly acidic). This geological trait makes schist, I’m told, a natural conveyor to the vines of the minerality that is sought after by wine enthusiasts.

Now that they were in the proper region, with the proper grape varieties to make the sort of complex, densely fruity wines that they enjoy, the young couple was ready—if you’ll excuse a final music analogy–to put down their castanets. Not long after their arrival in Laurens, the small Faugères town where they now live, they rented 5 hectares (slightly over 12 acres) of Grenache, Carignan, Cinsault, Mourvèdre, Aramon and Syrah. In 2010, they purchased 1 hectare of Syrah that abuts Didier Barral’s vineyard.

They’ll be bottling their first vintage in June, but I tasted several of their wines when I met them in April. They have a 100% Cinsault rosé, which is made, they explained, using the short-maceration technique and not the saignée method of bleeding off juice from just-crushed dark-skinned grapes. The Sarabande Rosé is a fresh, fruity (predominantly raspberries) wine with nice acidity and a translucent, salmon-orange color. At just €6 a bottle, it would seem to be a perfect summer house-wine. They make two red wines, an AOC Faugères, made from Grenache, Carignan, Syrah and Mourvèdre, named Tradition, and a Vin de pays red wine named VDF, which is made from Aramon and Syrah.

Once France’s most-grown grape variety, because of its incredibly high yields (up to 400hl/ha), Aramon has fallen out of favor. The light-colored, low-alcohol, and generally thin-in-character wines made from it are not much missed either. However, I had heard that when grown on poor soils, pruned to the point of oblivion, and kept to low yields, this grape can produce concentrated wines with spicy, earthy, somewhat rustic character. The Domaine Sarabande VDF blend of Syrah and Aramon may be one of those exceptions to the rule.

The couple hand picks, with the assistance of several friends, their grapes. After  being sorted, the grapes are run through a destemmer and then crushed in half-ton batches. The fermentation vats and all of their other equipment are new. Paul Gordon made a point of saying that they purchased new barrels for the wine that will undergo oak aging. Used barrels would have been cheaper, but they can introduce, he explained, contamination, diseases, and undesirable foreign yeasts into the cellar.

Each grape variety is vinified separately in stainless steel and plastic vats. Floating, inflatable lids are used to prevent the wine from oxidizing.

The Carignan that I tasted from a barrel had been aging for just over seven months. It was already a delicious wine with some hints of licorice and tobacco flavors. After around an equal time in a barrel, their Syrah was still closed, but dark fruit flavors with an intense, peppery component were detectable, and it should be even better when bottled this December.

The Tradition will cost €11 a bottle, which should make it another good quality-to-price wine, and the VDF blend is priced at €7.50.

Tagged as: Faugères, Languedoc