Marlene N° 3 VdF 2011

Marlène No. 3 is after the Belle Léone and the Les Cistes Marlène Soria's third Syrah, from one of the »best, craziest and most irrepressible winemakers in the whole of the Languedoc«, as it is called in the Vinum is called. It is certainly true that it takes a certain amount of strength of character to age one's wines for over ten years in large wood and cement tanks before bottling them. But what comes out of it proves Marlène Soria right. Marlène No. 3 is a Syrah that has been fermented with a small amount of Grenache. Both grape varieties are grown in the same vineyard on almost black soils.

dark garnet red with brick red rim

The now eleven-year matured Marlène No. 3 Like all wines from the winery, this wine requires a certain amount of air and space in a carafe. If you give the wine both, the previously closed cuvée opens up with a mixture of smokiness, Mediterranean and fruit basket. One finds blond tobacco here as well as cigar leaves and a little cedar, garrigue and macchia, a little gôut de champagne, leather and undergrowth as well as the ripe fruit of blackberries, figs, cassis and mulberries, rounded off with pepper, cinnamon bark and cool stone.

On the palate, the presence and depth of the Syrah, the compactness and density, which at some point swirls on the palate through an elegant acidity, excites at first. Then it becomes dark-fruited, juicy and fleshy, salty and even cool through a tonic minerality and a hint of graphite. All this combines with Mediterranean garrigue and with powdery fine tannins that envelop the fruit. The rule here is drink now, enjoy and store enough; for the wine has potential for many years.