100% Grenache

Food pairings: In its youth, red meats such as lightly aged beef, lamb tagine with apricots or duck breast with cherries; after about ten years, a Provençal daube.

Scores:

• 96 points, James Suckling
• 95 points, Jeb Dunnuck

Winemaking: The grapes are picked by hand into 25 kg crates and sorted twice, in the vineyard and on a sorting table. They are vinified as whole bunches in a truncated-cone concrete vat, with very long macerations and minimal intervention to keep the purity of the fruit. The wine ages for 20 months, 40% in foudre, 25% in barrels and 35% in concrete, and is bottled without fining or filtration. Cornelia Constanza is made only in great years: five of the last ten vintages.

Vineyards and terroir: The grapes come from the oldest parcel of Domaine de la Solitude, planted by an ancestor of the family at the start of the 20th century on the western slope of La Crau, on sandy safre soils. It is planted mainly with century-old Grenache that ripens exceptionally well. The 2020 was produced in conversion to organic farming (FR-BIO-01).

Family and history: The Martin family has been recorded in Châteauneuf-du-Pape since the 15th century. In the 17th century Claude Martin married Hélène Barberini, of the family of Pope Urban VIII, and La Solitude itself came to the family as the dowry of Françoise Deloume. In the 18th century Paul Martin was already shipping bottled “Vin de la Solitude” to England. The estate passed down through the female line to the Jacob and then the Lançon families, and Florent Lançon, the eighth generation, has run it since 2008.

In the pictures: Old-vine Grenache at Domaine de la Solitude (photo: Treephoto, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons); the domaine's barrel cellar; and a vine among the rounded stones of the domaine's vineyards. Photographs 2 and 3 from Domaine de la Solitude.