Hiyu Wine Farm Tzum Solais ‘Spring Ephemeral’ (2022)
This is from a plantation on a flat and sandy plateau bounded to the south by basalt boulders and sand dunes. It’s planted to all fifteen of the allowable varieties historically planted in Chateauneuf-du-pape, but with a far greater ratio of white to red grapes than may have ever existed there. This allows for a far more perfumed and ethereal expression of the sort of flavors one encounters from these grapes. In this sense it is closest in character to Evinate’s Margalagua or Salvo Foti’s Vigna Bosco; both plantings of very old vines with roughly equal amounts of red and white grapes. The composition allows for the production of a red that allows one to access the ethereal side of this arid, desert landscape.
