Muscular Northern Rhône-style Syrah from the Bonneton’s prized vineyard, where vines planted as far back as the 1940s cling to steep, south-facing terraces that look down to the river Doux, one of the Rhône’s western tributaries. The very oldest vines here are specifically Sérine, a thick-skinned, tightly-clustered clone of Syrah that is principally associated with nearby Côte-Rôtie. The soils here are the same decomposed granite (referred to locally as ‘gore’) one might find in the coveted Cornas AOC, but with a different aspect, sitting atop the valley to the west at around 600 metres altitude. The cooler nights bring a freshness and perfume to the wine that reflects this outlying terroir. Manual work is the only possibility here and, despite the vertiginous slopes, Remi is still working the soil by horse and plow.

Whole bunches are crushed by foot and left to macerate for a couple of weeks before being pressed into a mixture of old demi-muid barrels and amphora to age for one year, before bottling in the summer of 2023 with no additions at all. Deep, sumptuous blackcurrant fruit, black olive tapenade and toasted cacao with the kind of bold, fine-grained tannins you’d expect in this style of wine. After a couple of years in the bottle its drinking window is now starting to open. That said, it’s a bottle we also feel could happily sleep in the cellar for many years to come.