Biodynamic. Sourced from an assortment of different terroirs—clay/limestone, galets roulés and sandy parcels—Mas de Libian’s airborne vin de soif is based on high-grown Grenache (75%) with roughly equal amounts of Mourvèdre and Syrah (all destemmed). There is also a little fruit from the estate’s decade-old plantings of two southern Rhône natives, Counoise and Vaccarèse and a splash of Couston (the natural offspring of Grenache and Aubun Noir).
Pétanque refers to the popular Provençal game of boules, and this wine is correspondingly built for splashing around with friends in casual settings. There’s a short, five-day maceration, and the wine is raised exclusively in concrete tanks. Bottled unfiltered, with only a smidge of sulphur employed, Delicious, crunchy freshness is the name of the game here.
The new release is a typically vivacious Vin de Pétanque (is there any other?) and born to go with anything off a smoking grill. With more crunch this year, you get the wine’s silky sweet cherry and garrigue-laced huckleberry fruit folded up in snappy juiciness and superfine wispy tannin. A cracking release of the most irresistibly gulpable red we ship from France.