All the whites are orange

From the wine letter

Tom Lubbe was working at a wine estate in South Africa in the late nineties when his boss recommended an internship with Gérard Gauby in Calce. Gauby then brought him back as a cellar hand for three more vintages. Lubbe married Gauby’s sister Nathalie. He had meant to return to South Africa, but their first child kept him in Calce. The 2003 vintage was made entirely in the living room of the newly married couple. “The kid, the wine … It was the first year of our marriage, and almost our last!” says Tom Lubbe. A year later his brother-in-law let him have the old Gauby cellar.

Today all the white wines at Matassa spend time on their skins, while the reds are often co-fermented with white grapes. Lubbe vinifies Grenache Gris, a grey grape, both as a white wine and as a red. Picking begins in early August with the Muscat. Since Lubbe began growing cover crops between the vines, the alcohol in his wines has fallen, and today they rarely exceed twelve per cent. No sulphur has been added to any of the wines since the 2015 vintage.

P.S. The El Carner Rouge 2024, the sixth wine in the larger set, is another red made with Grenache Gris, here in a field blend with white Macabeu. The vines, on limestone, clay and schist, are over 115 years old. El Carner is Catalan for “the ram”. Approx. €33.