Region: Côtes du Rhône AOC, Southern Rhône Valley, France

Varietal: 100% Grenache

Producer: Domaine La Manarine was created by Gilles Gasq in April 2001, with the winery and majority of its vineyards located in the commune of Travaillan, on a splendid plateau northeast of Orange in the southern Rhône. Gasq is not a winemaker who stumbled into this accidentally — he honed his skills working as an assistant to Paul Jeune of Domaine Monpertuis in Châteauneuf-du-Pape, one of the appellation's most respected names, before returning to build his own first-generation domaine from the ground up. That Châteauneuf pedigree runs through everything he makes, and the Côtes du Rhône is no exception.

Vineyard & Winemaking: The estate-grown fruit comes from vineyards on the celebrated "Plan de Dieu," where recent research has confirmed that the underlying soil contains a deep layer of more than 60% hard limestone galets — the large smooth pebbles that are the signature of the southern Rhône's finest terroirs. Those galets sit over a limestone-clay base, providing excellent drainage, heat retention, and the kind of stony mineral backbone that pushes Grenache toward complexity rather than flabbiness. The domaine is certified organic, fermentations start with indigenous yeasts, and work in the cellar is minimal throughout. Grapes are destemmed before fermentation, with a cuvaison of around three weeks, and the wine is bottled without filtration after twenty to twenty-four months of élevage.

Tasting Notes: At 14% ABV, this is Grenache with some serious sun behind it, but it produces a classically spicy, full-bodied wine that speaks clearly of the garrigue of the region — dried herbs, lavender, wild thyme, and a core of ripe red and dark fruit kept honest by that stony, mineral frame. The texture is generous and mouth-filling, with the warmth you'd expect from the vintage, balanced by the natural freshness of the terroir. This is precisely the kind of wine Châteauneuf trained Gilles Gasq to make — and at Côtes du Rhône prices, it's an embarrassingly good deal.