It is easy in the Rhone to make a full bodied, rustic wine with lush notes of stewed fruit and earth. The hard part is to make wine that offers all that garrigue and cherry, raspberry and currant, but in measured doses and with attention to detail. Eric and Sophie Ughetto of Domaine la Roubine achieve this balance with their soulful, impressively subtle wines from Gigondas, Vacqueyras and Sablet.

This 2021 vintage Vacqueyras is a classic edition of the Roubine style. Manually harvested grapes are aged in a mix of concrete and large, neutral oak. No yeast is added during the slow fermentation, and no fining or filtration is done to take things away. The result is one of the purest expressions of site, soil, and vintage in the Rhone. 2021 was a challenging year for many producers less careful than the Ughettos, but with careful hand picking, they produced a wine of finesse, full of dried raspberry and cooked red cherry fruit, lavender, indiscriminate additions from the savory spice cabinet, and luxurious, tannin lined texture that stops just short of heavy thanks to the acidity that brings with it a drop of orange oil.