Guru 2023 Magnum

Alain Castex and Ghislaine Magnier started Casot des Mailloles at Banyuls-sur-Mer in 1994 and spent two decades on steep terraced plots there, working old vines by hand and without chemicals. What came out was pale, low in alcohol and quietly radical, and it became the reference point for a generation of growers across the Pyrénées-Orientales. Laurent Roger of Mataburro was one of the people who learned alongside him.

So Guru is not really a Mataburro wine, and not quite a Castex one either. When Castex died he left wine still working in his tanks, and Laurent finished it for him. Grenache and Macabeo together on skins, a red grape and a white one in the same vessel, which was Castex's idiom rather than Mataburro's. It gives dried apricot and red berry at once, a dusty tannic grip, orange peel at the edges and a savoury herbal close. This is the magnum, which slows the whole thing down considerably.