Domaine de Belliviere - Les Arches de Bellivière "Astrancia", Rosé, France (2021)

TASTING NOTES

Kind of like the wine equivalent of an aperol spritz. A little bitter orange rind, some red apples, black fruits, baking spices and white pepper. A fair amount of bite and refreshing acidity. 

Aubun is a rather obsure local variety in the Ventoux that brings freshness to the Grenache base.

The Nicolas family work with thirty plots spread over five communes. They farm and work biodynamically, famously in the Jasnières are of the Loire. Astrancia is part of their second and newer line of wines, Les Arches de Bellivière, created to give them some flexibility beyond their normal geographical bounds amidst a long run of difficult Loire vintages.

The vines in this case are in Ventoux in the southern Rhône and are farmed biodynamically and range from 10 to 30 years old. The bunches are harvested by hand into small bins and sent by refrigerated truck to the Bellivière cellar, where they are destemmed, gently pressed and the must put into large oak vats; after a brief maceration, the juice for Astrancia is bled off--with the rest of the contents going on to be the red Raisins Migrateurs--and fermented spontaneously with indigenous yeasts and without sulfur.

This deeply colored rosé wine is aged briefly and bottled with a small amount of sulfur.