ANDERS FREDERIK STEEN & ANNE BRUUN BLAUERT
That One in the Crowd 2024
Ardèche, France
This is the very last part of a direct press Cinsault from Mazel, in a blend, with four days pressing of Syrah from our own vineyards. Fermentation and close to two years of élevage in foudre. No soutirage. The wine has stayed all its time in foudre on the lees of both the fermentation and the élevage. It has given us a light-colored rosé with less of the classical fruity and floral flavors found in rosés. Instead, this wine has an interesting profile of dry bitter notes, as green olives or thyme, very Mediterranean. The two years the wine has spent on the lees in the foudre, was just enough time, to add these bready-yeasty and autolytic flavors that we love so much.
Cinsault, 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.