Domaine de l’Horizon Mar y Muntanya 2021
From importer Rosenthal Wine Merchants:
A tiny village of around 200 inhabitants, Calce lies at the foot of the mighty Pyrenees, ten miles northwest of Perpignan, within striking distance of the Spanish border. Though technically part of the Languedoc-Roussillon, Calce is not French—it is Catalan. The wines from around this village have about as much in common with the vast sun-soaked enormity of the south of France as, say, Chablis does to the Rhone Valley. And, although Calce has been renowned as a viticultural area since the Knights Templar wrote admiringly about it in the 9th century, wines from this remote corner of southern France are still relatively unknown and underappreciated—even among the most dialed-in of cognoscenti.
Calce is a geologist’s dream. The variety of soils within such a compact wine-growing zone is mindboggling: there is brown slate and black slate; there are deep alluvial gravel deposits full of large, slick river stones; there is iron-oxide-drenched marl of a deep red hue; and, in most of these areas, the mother rock itself lies beneath a mere eight to fifteen inches of topsoil, demanding the tough old vines to plunge down, down, down for precious water. The soils here were formed in the last ice age, when the slate massif of the Pyrenees collided violently with the limestone massif of Corbieres—and Calce encompasses the folds, faults, and striations of that geological episode. Consequently, wines from Calce offer some of the most profound, most spine-tingling, most physically palpable minerality of any wines on the planet.
And that wind… Calce is constantly buffeted both by the fierce “Tramontane” roaring down from the north and by the “Marin” blowing in from the Mediterranean Sea, which lies a mere ten miles to the east—in clear view of much of Calce’s relatively high-altitude vineyard area. These constant gusts keep the vines and the grapes cool, which keeps the acidity beautifully high, and also makes it relatively easy to work here without chemicals, as vine diseases have a hard time gaining a foothold in such an extreme microclimate. Calce is a rocky, hilly, windy, rugged landscape of starkly raw beauty, far removed from the lush decadence of the “south of France” of our collective consciousness, and closer to something almost Tolkien-esque in its vibe of old and brooding natural power.
As one might expect, making wine in Calce is no easy task. There are many ancient, untrained vines here—gnarled, soulful, wind-beaten entities well into their second century of existence, in vineyards of pure rock, stretching their weathered limbs out in all directions and making machine work impossible. Profound but stingy old vines that, even in bountiful years, offer forth barely twenty hectoliters per hectare of juice. It takes an almost superhuman level of dedication, perseverance, vision, and spirit to tend these vineyards, to forge wine from the thick blood of these imposing old vines.
A tiny, maniacally dedicated group of vignerons known casually as the “Calce school” proudly cultivates this difficult land. A few decades ago, the visionary Gerard Gauby began steering his methodology in a more natural direction, working organically, and manipulating the wines as minimally as possibly in the cellar to allow the profound and singular terroir of Calce to express itself as arrestingly as possible. In his wake, a few very small wineries have forged a path of non-interventionism and purity of expression, and it’s difficult to imagine a more intense concentration of thoughtful, committed individuals anywhere in the world of wine.
At the forefront of this movement is Thomas Teibert, founder and owner of Domaine de l’Horizon. German-born Thomas has enjoyed a successful and influential career in wine—as the winemaker for Manincor in the Alto Adige, as the export manager and long-time salesperson for the hugely regarded Stockinger cooperage in Austria, and as a consultant for a variety of small wineries in France and Italy. When he met Gerard Gauby in 2005 and became acquainted with the difficult soul of Calce, he knew immediately that he wanted to make wine there. After all, Calce provides the ultimate challenge, but provides perhaps the ultimate reward—somehow, it is a perfectly logical place for someone of Teibert’s vast experience and ability to want to call home.
Quantities are pathetic, indeed—but we know deep-down that the most adventurous, the most terroir-obsessed, the most trail-blazing among you will revel in these wines, just as we have. Wines of this character are rare and special—and still offer real value in a wine world increasingly given over to commodity, status, and collector-frenzy. The initial shipment from Domaine de l’Horizon will reach our shores around mid-Aprilh. We cannot recommend them highly enough for their precise, profound, and thrilling channeling of a truly incredible terroir.
