L'Esprit de l'Horizon Côtes Catalanes Rouge | 2020

After tasting this red, you’ll be plotting your next trip to Calce. At the foot of the Pyrenees, where France becomes Spain (or is Spain becoming France?), the landscape is remote, bare-bones, and unassuming, but the soils are a treasure chest of slates, gravels, marls, and exposed bedrock that cuts through the surface like an axe. Set between the cold, dry Tramontane winds from the north and the gentle Marin air of the Mediterranean, this place is all about rubber band ball tension and freshness. 

Domaine de l’Horizon is the project of German-born Thomas Teibert, formerly the winemaker at Manincor in Alto Adige, export manager for Austria’s Stockinger cooperage, and a respected consultant. In 2005, after befriending Gérard Gauby of legendary Domaine Gauby, he became intrigued with Calce and decided that there was nowhere else he wanted to make wine. Today, the estate encompasses 16 hectares. The wines are Certified Biodynamic, and the quantities are laughable. L'Esprit de l'Horizon is Thomas’s “baby” red, but it moves with young adult swagger. A blend of 60% Carignan and 40% Syrah, aged in old foudres and demi-muids, it drinks like colors in motion: fuchsia, raspberry pink, and purple skies. ~Allegra Angelo