ANDERS FREDERIK STEEN & ANNE BRUUN BLAUERT
Les Vignes des Enfants 2019
Ardèche, France
From a beautiful parcel of Petite Sirah planted over three hundred metres above sea level. The bush vines are planted over a complex terroir of clay, limestone and marnes bleues and the fruit is destemmed and fermented on the skins for ten days, before being pressed to old barriques for four years of rest. From a particularly warm, dry year, it is raw, savoury and deep, with oxidative notes wound up in layers of black fruit, bitter herbs and spice.
Petite Syrah
ABOUT THE PRODUCER
Anders Frederik Steen and Anne Bruun Blauert make their thoughtful and highly original wines from “grapes and only grapes”.
Anders began making wine in 2013 when he first started purchasing fruit from winemakers he admired and making wine alongside his friend, legendary Jura winemaker, Jean-Marc Brignot. The couple and their young family have now settled in the beautiful village of Valvignères in the Ardèche. The many varieties grown here thrive on a perfect mix of clay and limestone and the vineyards are full of life, having been tended organically for decades.
As well as their own vineyards, the two also harvest grapes with their friends Gérald and Jocelyne Oustric of La Mazel in Valvignères and further afield with the Bannwarth family in Obermorschwihr, Alsace.
In his previous life Anders was both a chef and sommelier, working at the best restaurants in his native Denmark. This experience informs the couple’s winemaking, in that a little like a kitchen working with the seasons, they do not seek to follow rules or conventions and do not feel the need to make the same wines each year. Instead, as they harvest, they taste the grapes and begin to imagine the kind of wine they might be able to make. Layers of flavour and texture are brought about through slow presses, oxygen and canny blends.
It is a refreshingly free, creative approach that yields thought provoking, sometimes challenging wines that are truly one of a kind.