Score: 95/100
What is the Larmes des Fées Cuvée?
Larmes des Fées is the flagship wine in Laurent Miquel’s range, the highest level, most expensive and refined wine.
Why this name you may ask?
Château Cazal Viel, the ancient property that hosts Laurent Miquel winemaking facilities, is home to an underground cavern with a spring in it.
Local folklore tells that fairies (Fées in French) live in the spring and guard its purity. Until the turn of the last century, the women of the local villages, Cessenon and Cazouls, met at the spring to wash their clothes and share the local gossip.
According to the legend, their vicious gossip mongering and bitter rivalry caused much sadness amongst the fairies and on occasion, the sound of fairies tears was heard.
How is the Larmes des Fées made?
This wine is made from 100% Syrah grapes, from Laurent Miquel estate’s best vineyards on calcareous soil.
After night-time harvesting, fermentation and extended maceration, the wine was aged for 14 months in new French oak barrels. Fined and lightly filtred before bottling.
Tasting Notes
This Saint-Chinian wine comes in a very very dark red color, clearly densely black to the core, intense red with orange hues to the rim.
The nose is charming, seducing thanks to its absolutely-intriguing characters. Two words describe it best: utterly deep!
There is a lot going on, but in an amazingly controlled way. Smelling it, the image coming to my mind is one of a black hole. It feels many of the wine’s aromas are still trapped into the wine, to be released later in the wine’s potentially very long life. Only the best, most pungent and powerful aromas manage to escape and reach your sense.
Huge cherry liqueur and dark chocolate are dominant notes, accompanied by intense clove, for a spicy, deep, fruity, and toasted whole.
There is black pepper, leather, truffle, Provencal herbs, coffee, brioche, as well as a distinctive red cured-meat tone making for an amazing aromatic complexity.
You could spend a long time smelling and analyzing the nose and find new notes every time you sniff it, mark of the great, interesting wines.
Putting it in your mouth, the palate stuns by its utter density, but more importantly: its smoothness.
It is absolutely silky smooth!
The round palate texture gives birth to an explosion of fruity, spicy, and leathery/meaty/mushroomy flavors that are complex and powerful.
See it in a Quick Video
Overall
A stunning Languedoc wine that demonstrates how deep, intense, and complex a wine this region can produce.
Silky smooth and utterly dense, if you’re after a powerful and fruity wine, that delivers a crazy-complex array of flavors, in both a fruity and savory style… THIS… is a wine to experience!
Enjoy ?
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