2019 Aurélien Lefort VOIe dE deTresSE

Formerly a Parisian painter and illustrator, Aurélien Lefort farms around one and a half hectares around his village of Madriat. The terroir here is quite different to the northern part of the Auvergne, with less volcanic elements and a higher volume of many different types of clay. The vineyards are planted with numerous diverse varieties and vines up to to 120 years old can be found. Aurélien makes wines of incredible purity in a tiny cellar underneath his house and his usual production is ridiculously small, made even smaller due to the scarcity of grapes in recent years as a result of hail and frost. For this reason some of Aurélien's labels are made from friends’ grapes grown in other parts of France and even sometimes in Italy.

Aurélien's wines are deeply intellectual, often made using techniques like immersing whole-cluster grapes in direct-press juice in order to recreate the anaerobic environment of carbonic maceration without the addition of CO2. Seriously tiny quantities, almost impossible to find. These won't last long. 

"“Detresse” translates a little bit like ‘in distress’, but is more romantic. The name evokes the fatigue that results from making this wine. This is a collaboration with Aurelien’s friend Riccardo - or a ‘cuvee ensemble’, even more romantic. Aurelien and Riccardo harvested the grapes together at Controvento in Abruzzo, Italy. After that, a lot of wine and very little sleep, they drove the rented refrigerated van 18 hours straight back to Madriat, which was painful but fun (reminding me of a similar experience I had with Luke Burgess in Spain, literally slapping each other to stay awake). Aurelien wanted to make a red wine that drinks like a white, a ‘vin de soif’ with tension. Composed of 50-50 red and white grapes, the montepulciano was directly pressed, and the destemmed berries of trebbiano were fermented into the montepulciano juice where they continued fermenting together." - Giorgio, importer

Varietal: Montepulciano, Trebbiano

Region: Auvergne, FR

Viticulture: Organic