Domaine Balansa ‘Coume de Maliès’ Blanc 2022

Location: France, Languedoc-Roussillon

Winemaker: Céline Peyre & Alexandre Gressent

Grapes: Grenache Blanc, Grenache Gris, Carignan Blanc, Carignan Gris, Rolle

Winemaking: Hand harvest. 3-days skin maceration in concrete tanks and neutral oak with indigenous yeasts. Aged in concrete tanks and neutral oak. No filtering and no fining.

From us at M&L: Domaine Balansa begins in 2012 with Céline Peyre, who, after living in Paris, felt compelled to return to her roots: the family’s vineyard within the Hautes-Corbières AOC. Céline made the decision with her partner, Alexandre Gressent, in 2015 to take over the old vines and begin producing wine under her own label.

The dramatic sweeping hillsides at the property are home to plantings of 100-year-old Grenache, Carignan, and Syrah, biodynamically farmed across 14 hectares of hillside vines that the Peyre family have been stewards of for multiple generations. The area is known as Fitou Montagneux (mountainous Fitou), and is just uphill from the Etang de Leucate lagoon, directly between Perpignan and Narbonne. This is a romantic place - Mediterranean, sun-drenched and breezy, and Céline’s wines feel like a perfect reflection of this.

Whereas the modern inclination in the region has been toward extracted, voluminous, chewy red wine, Céline is part of a cadre of younger growers in the area who eschew heft for freshness, incorporating the wind and sun to aid their organic viticulture. This was the way in the centuries before: lively, perfumed wines of restorative energy and a hedonistic drinkability.