A custom cuvée for European Cellars and a joint project between Eric Solomon and Jean-Marc Lafage, Bastide Miraflors is a cuvée created from old vine Grenache (30%) grown on the schist and granite soils of Saint-Paul de Fenouillet, a terroir that always ripens late in the year, and Syrah (70%) from gravelly soils near the Mediterranean. After a long maceration of six weeks, the wine ages for 12 months in roughly 3/4 concrete vats and 1/4 600L French oak demi-muids.

Soil: Alluvial gravel, schist, granite

Varietals: Syrah, Grenache, Mourvèdre

Age of Vines: 55

Hand harvested, short pre-fermentation maceration, fermented in tank, minimum 30 day maceration

14 months in concrete tanks (50%) and 600L French oak demi-muids (50%), vegan, sustainable farming.

PROPRIETOR
Jean-Marc & Eliane Lafage

WINEMAKER
Jean-Marc & Eliane Lafage

For twenty years, we have worked with Jean-Marc Lafage at his estate in the Roussillon and across the border in Spain, where he consults on several projects. As good as his wines were when we first met him, they only get better with each vintage. While his family has been growing grapes and making wine in the Roussillon since 1791, it was Jean-Marc’s early insight into the potential for the Roussillon to make a wide range of dry wines at very affordable prices that established his “new” estate. While his grandfather and father made wine for the family, JeanMarc was the first to break away from selling most of his grapes to the local cooperative. Over the generations, his family had amassed scattered vineyards throughout the region, which now totals over 160 hectares of vines, most of them in excess of 50 years in age. Another factor in Jean-Marc’s success is the diversity of the terroirs in the Roussillon. Squeezed between the far southern edge of the limestone Corbières Massif to the north and the granitic Pyrenees mountains in the south, the Roussillon is an undulating terrain of complex soil types, orientations, and exposures. Three river valleys, the Agly, Têt, and Tech, drain the region generally flowing west to east, where they meet the Mediterranean. Within its borders, Jean-Marc has identified six principal sub-zones in the appellation: the Crest, the Upper Agly Valley, the Uplands of Fenouillet, Les Asprès, the Mediterranean Plain, the Rocky Coast. Each region has its own expression and when you factor in the various varieties Jean-Marc has planted, you can understand why he can make so many riveting wines at such reasonable prices. Bastide Miraflors A custom cuvée for European Cellars and a joint project between Eric Solomon and Jean-Marc Lafage, Bastide Miraflors is a cuvée created from old vine Grenache (30%) grown on the schist and granite soils of Saint-Paul de Fenouillet, a terroir that always ripens late in the year, and Syrah (70%) from gravelly soils near the Mediterranean. After a long maceration of six weeks, the wine ages for 12 months in roughly 3/4 concrete vats and 1/4 600L French oak demi-muids.

91 – 2021 Bastide Miraflors – James Suckling
90 – 2021 Bastide Miraflors – Wine Spectator
90 – 2020 Bastide Miraflors – Wine Advocate