Domaine de la Mordoree

Christophe and Fabrice Delorme at Domaine de la Mordorée did not take long to project this fine estate (which is named, somewhat poetically, after a woodcock) into the Premier League.

Based in the Southern Rhone appellation of Tavel, the brothers make, as one would expect, delicious rosé wine in addition to a very fine Lirac and an excellent Châteauneuf-du-Pape.

Christophe produced his first wines there in 1987. Up until that time the estate had been little more than a hobby for his father, an industrialist with two great passions; shooting and wine.

Christophe totally refurbished and modernised the winery as well as replanting much of the vineyards. Today the domaine has 40 hectares of vineyards - 7 hectares in Tavel, 15 hectares in Lirac (top-notch examples), 16 hectares for generic Côtes-du-Rhône and 3 hectares in Châteauneuf-du-Pape.

The vineyards are organically cultivated as much as possible, only using chemical weedkillers and pesticides as a very last resort. As for the winemaking, the grapes are all systematically destemmed upon arrival at the winery and vinification takes place in temperature controlled stainless steel fermenters. The wines are then matured in a mixture of stainless steel vats and new oak barrels. The Châteauneuf-du-Pape Cuvée de la Reine des Bois is a limited bottling only produced in the very finest years.