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france: rhone

Domaine Hautes Cances, Cairanne

The Hautes Cances vineyards are a legacy of Anne-Marie Astart’s family, from a domaine her grandparents founded in the 1890s. She herself had gone into the medical profession and married Jean-Marie, a psychiatrist. When her family bequeathed them the domaine in 1992, they had to decide whether to take that responsibility, or sell. Anne-Marie didn’t want to walk away from her family history, and Jean-Marie welcomed a chance to do some farming as a way of balancing out his psychiatry work. So they did the reasonable thing, and enrolled in the local winemaking school…

They probably questioned the wisdom of that decision when they harvested these vineyards for the first time in 1992. The skies opened as they picked and a great deluge fell, with all manner of flooding and death and destruction (a cycle that repeated itself in the southern Rhône in 2002). They figured that they were lucky their harvest was contractually obligated to go to the cooperative.

In 1995, however, their confidence was such that they pulled out of the cooperative and began the conversion to organic farming. They were among the first, if not the first, to go organic in Cairanne. They also bought back part of the original family cellar, and doubled their vineyard size.

Jean-Marie’s dual careers proved impractical, and in 2000 he quit his practice to devote his energies to the domaine. During the winter of 2003-04 they built a new, gravity-operated cellar into a hillside, and buried its two roofs under soil to make the building naturally temperature controlled (the production room sits under one meter while the ageing room has two meters of soil—and now an olive orchard—overhead).

Today the domaine farms 17.5 hectares, or 43 acres, of vines. These are located around the village of Cairanne and on the Ventabrin Massif that rises up behind (that is, to the north of) Cairanne, Rasteau, and Roaix. Up there at 250 meters is their parcel of Col du Débat, on the northern side of the massif, a cool site that more than one local vigneron believes could be where the future lies for Cairanne’s viticulture with the advent of global warming.

Jean-Marie makes wines that he likes to drink—robust and loaded with character. Yields are low, the grapes are hand-harvested and de-stemmed, fermented with indigenous yeast in large cement vats without pumping over or rack-and-return (rather, the cap is submerged by a grid) before racking into barrel, and the wine is never fined and normally not filtered. The vineyards are farmed organically in all respects except for a minimal amount of weed killer used in part of the Col de Débat vineyard. (If the Astarts were the first to work organically in Cairanne, they were also the first to stop when, in 2003, while plowing weeds between vines, their tractor twice slid down a hillside at the Col du Débat vineyard. The tractor didn’t tip over, but the possibility was close enough that they decided living with a little herbicide beat not living.)

The Wines

• VdP de la Principauté d’Orange "Terre de Cheyenne": The name comes from the early days when Anne-Marie kept a spirited horse named Cheyenne near the vineyard. Yields here average 40 hectoliters per hectare and the grapes are hand-harvested (the law permits yields up to 120 hl/ha and machine harvesting, both of which tend to be the norm). This is the one red wine the domaine makes entirely in tank. The blend is roughly 40% Syrah, 30% Grenache, and 30% Carignan.
• Côtes du Rhône: The blend is roughly 45% Grenache, 20% Syrah, 20% Cinsault, 10% Carignan, and 5% Mourvèdre. The vines average 50+ years of age, and the wine is aged in older Burgundy barrels. Production comes in around 1,000 cases a year.

• Cairanne Tradition: The blend is roughly 35% Syrah, 20% Grenache, 20% Mourvèdre, 15% Carignan, 5% Cinsault, and 5% Counoise. These vines have an older average age than the Côtes du Rhône vines, and the wine is aged in older Burgundy barrels. Production is around 850 cases.

• Cairanne Vieilles Vignes: This is based on Grenache, making up roughly 70% of the blend. The remainder is more or less equal parts Syrah (the old small-berried Serine variety) and Mourvèdre. The Grenache vines are over 100 years old; the Syrah was planted in 1972-73, while the Mourvèdre was planted in 1962-63. This wine is aged in older Burgundy barrels. Production varies between 250-450 cases.
• Cairanne Col du Débat: This vineyard is up on the north face of the Vendabrin Massif, and as such it gets the full brunt of the mistral when it blows out of the Alps, sucked south by African deserts. The northern exposure protects the vines from the sun’s hottest rays while the elevation gives cooler nighttime temperatures; thus, fundamentally, this is the opposite situation from the parcels that make up the vieilles vignes cuvée. The vines average 50+ years of age, and yields of 18-20 hectoliters per hectare are the lowest of all the domaine’s vineyards. The blend is based on 50-65% Grenache, then normally Carignan, followed by Syrah, followed by Counoise (this last is usually under 5% of the blend). The élevage is no different from the other Cairanne cuvées, but this wine is darker, more linear, fresher, and plainly more elusive than its siblings. It is a fascinating wine. Production varies greatly depending on the year, between 250 to 650 cases.