Cinsault 2020

• Low tannin and bright acid take chilli in their stride: char siew or laksa.
• Or roast chicken and charred vegetables, with the pan juices poured over.

Aurélien Houillon spent six years in Pierre Overnoy's cellar in the Jura, learning from one of the founding figures of natural wine. His brother Emmanuel stayed on to run that domaine. Aurélien went south. After a spell working with different grapes in Switzerland, he and Charlotte, a translator of ancient Ethiopian manuscripts turned horse trainer, settled in 2017 at Faucon, in the Vaucluse, at the foot of Mont Ventoux.

The farm covers nine hectares, and only about four and a half of them are vines. The rest is woodland, fruit trees and olives, and the couple chose the place for that mix as much as for the old Grenache, Syrah and Cinsault already growing there. The vines sit at around 300 metres in a small valley, on deep sand and blue-grey marl, cooled by a stream and the Mistral. The farming is certified organic and run along biodynamic lines. Victoire, a Poitevin mare, and Castor, a Poitou donkey, do much of the work between the rows, and old vines are propagated from their own cuttings rather than replaced.

In the cellar, grapes are destemmed by hand and left to ferment whole in closed tanks for ten weeks or more, barely touched. The wines rest in steel and old barrels and go to bottle with nothing added: no cultured yeast, no fining, no filtration, no sulphur. Their rule is simple. Anything they would not eat does not go into the wine.

What comes out is the southern Rhône in a lighter hand than usual. The Cinsault is pale and crunchy, all red fruit and pepper. Indigo, Syrah with Grenache, runs deeper, with bramble fruit, violets and a thread of blood orange, but never feels heavy.