Francois Villard L'Appel des Sereines Syrah 2018

Villard farms sustainably and hopes to be certified organic by 2023. He works his soils and uses organic fertilizers and organic treatments for disease as needed. He’s working with spontaneous fermentations and he has begun experiments with making wine without sulfur during vinification and it has gone well, so he’ll expand on that in the coming years. He has no intention of eliminating sulfur altogether and plans to continue to use a minimum amount of sulfur at bottling. He filters the wines if he needs too, but tries to avoid it.  In terms of style, Villard tends to harvest later than his neighbors, optimizing ripeness. He uses whole clusters during vinification as the stems give freshness to the wine. Villard never chaptalizes and will make several passes in the vineyards to wait for the fruit to ripen. He’s using barrels and foudres for aging, some new depending on the cuvée. The reds strike a nice harmony between red fruit notes and spicy earth, classic Northern Rhône. This Syrah is made with a twelve day maceration with twenty-five percent whole clusters in open-top wood tronconique vats followed by eleven months of aging, half in the vat and half in neutral barrels.