A wonderfully balanced wine with impressive body.

Invitingly deep black in color with beautiful brilliance. Very delicate on the nose, the wine shows subtle aromas of black pepper and forest fruits. On the palate, it is rich and opulent with firm tannins, perfectly complemented by a wonderful freshness derived from the minerality of the granite soils. A spicy and very elegant Saint-Joseph that is still very young and should be aged for several years before drinking.

We recommend opening the wine at its best within its first three years and enjoying it with grilled meat, game dishes, or a classic pigeon.

After a hot and unusually dry summer, the wines impress with their opulence, concentration, and full-bodiedness. With maturation, the wines become more approachable and balanced.

Appellation:
The Saint-Joseph appellation is located between the villages of St. Pierre de Boeuf and Charvanay in the northern Rhône. For a long time, all the vineyards there were owned by small local winegrowers who produced exclusively for their own consumption. Before them, monks had begun viticulture here centuries ago.

Terroir:
The parent rock of the Saint-Joseph region consists mainly of granite, and the vineyards run for 40 km along the right bank of the Rhône. For this first vintage of Saint-Joseph Rouge, the best grapes were selected from the northern vineyards of the appellation, which bring a lot of minerality and fruit, as well as grapes from the historic center of Saint-Joseph "Village de Mauves", which give the wine its impressive body. The result is a wonderfully balanced wine.

Maison & Domaines Les Alexandrins - northern Rhône

Three personalities from the northern Rhône Valley stand for the new company "Domaine & Maison Les Alexandrins": Nicolas Jaboulet, 6th generation of a winegrowing family that settled in Tain l’Hermitage in 1834; Guillaume Sorrel, son of Marc Sorrel from Domaine Sorrel in Hermitage; and Alexandre Caso, an expert on the terroirs of the northern Rhône Valley.

They met in 2012, when Nicolas Jaboulet (at the head of the company Maison Nicolas Perrin, founded in 2007), Guillaume Sorrel, and Alexandre Caso (both founded Domaine Les Alexandrins in Mercurol in 2009) introduced plot-by-plot management of the Crozes-Hermitage vineyards for the wines of Maison Nicolas Perrin. Their combined expertise has shaped the history of the northern Rhône Valley.

With a similar mindset, all three are interested in the great wines of their region and quickly had further big goals. In 2014, Alexandre and Guillaume wished to further advance their wines from Domaine Les Alexandrins. At the same time, Nicolas wanted to anchor his company Maison Nicolas Perrin in the heart of the northern Rhône Valley. And so, a closer collaboration finally came about.

Since 2015, Maison Nicolas Perrin has held a majority stake in Domaine Les Alexandrins, which led to the name change to "Domaine et Maison Les Alexandrins". Through this collaboration, on the one hand, the dream of Domaine Les Alexandrins could be continued – producing wines from the northern Rhône that are classically styled from the ground up – and on the other hand, Maison Nicolas Perrin could be transformed into Maison Les Alexandrins, thus expanding its wine range, known for its quality, to all the appellations of the northern Rhône Valley.

Nicolas Jaboulet, Guillaume Sorrel, and Alexandre Caso are bringing out treasures here, very often forgotten or old vines from exceptional terroirs that express the brilliance of the appellation. The three men benefit from the skill and experience of their parents and grandparents. Therefore, they exclusively produce wines that reflect the appellations of Crozes-Hermitage and Saint-Joseph with their vines on historic terroirs in their purest form. The Domaine is therefore limited in several ways: as far as the appellations are concerned (Crozes-Hermitage, Saint-Joseph) and as far as volume is concerned.

The work is carried out plot by plot. The vines are cultivated as they were before, entirely in the tradition of the regional winegrowers. This applies to the over 70-year-old Syrah vines in Crozes-Hermitage, but also to the over 90-year-old, forgotten vines in Tournon (Saint-Joseph). And every year – whether it is fully harvested or not – Domaine Les Alexandrins applies practices that are already frequently forgotten in the northern Rhône Valley today.

Maison Les Alexandrins is the natural evolution of the former Maison Nicolas Perrin. The company had already been exceptionally successful since 2007 and had received numerous awards. It always continued to develop in the northern Rhône Valley by relying on very experienced people and concentrating on one Domaine: Domaine Les Alexandrins in the middle of the Crozes-Hermitage appellation.

The wines of Maison Les Alexandrins therefore reflect the entire work of the Domaine. They are more modern in their presentation (as there is little wine from the Domaine, other wines are also offered, which was not customary before); they are more contemporary in their style (the goal is perfect harmony even in young wines, which thus offer early drinking pleasure); they are more diverse in terms of the wine range from the northern Rhône Valley (not just Crozes-Hermitage and Saint-Joseph).

This range invites wine lovers worldwide to view and assess the traditions of the northern Rhône Valley from a new perspective. The range consists at the same time of contemporary and timeless wines that come from an exceptional terroir discovered by the expert on the terroirs of the northern Rhône Valley, Alexandre Caso. Eight different wines embody this revived classicism.

Producer: Nicolas Jaboulet, Maison Nicolas Perrin, 29 Côte des Chapeliers, 26000 Valence, France