Matassa 'Coume de l'Olla' Blanc, Vin de France

Matassa 'Coume de l'Olla' Blanc, Vin de France

Grapes — Macabeu, Muscat d'Alexandrie, Muscat à Petits Grains

Region — Calce, Roussillon, France

Tasting Notes — Glowing amber-orange with a luminous clarity. The nose is aromatic and full of life: persimmon, cantaloupe, mandarin peel, dried hay, apple, warm spice, and wildflowers. The palate is ripe and textured, with a gentle tannic grip from the whole cluster maceration, a bracing saline minerality, and a long, dry, mouthwatering finish. Around 10.5% alcohol, which makes the concentration and depth genuinely remarkable. Pure, strange in the best possible way, and impossible to stop drinking.

The Wine — A single vineyard skin contact white from the Coume de l'Olla parcel, a hillside site at 500 to 600 meters elevation in the Roussillon hills above Calce. The vines are 30 to 45 years old, planted on calcareous clay and marl with an unusually high iron content, dry farmed and worked entirely by hand. Whole clusters spend two weeks macerating on skins and stems in concrete, then the wine ages roughly eight months in 2,000 liter concrete tanks before bottling. Tom Lubbe harvests dramatically earlier than his neighbors, usually starting with the Muscat in early August, which is why these wines carry such vivid acidity and such low alcohol without ever feeling thin.

Farming — Certified organic, with biodynamic practices applied where useful. Tom's real obsession over the past decade has been cover cropping, which he credits with transforming the estate's soils entirely. He believes the explosion of insect and worm life in the soil has changed the flavor of his wines directly, and he points to a striking piece of evidence: fruit that reached 13.5% potential alcohol in 2005 now comes in closer to 10.5%. Dry farmed throughout, hand harvested, no synthetic inputs of any kind.

Winemaking — Native yeasts only. Two week whole cluster maceration in concrete, fermented and aged in concrete vats with no oak at any stage. Aged on lees. Bottled unfined and unfiltered. No oenological additives whatsoever. Vegan. Confirm zero versus minimal sulfur for your specific vintage with your rep, as sources describe both.

The Producer — Domaine Matassa is the Roussillon estate of Tom Lubbe, a New Zealander raised in South Africa who became one of the most influential figures in natural wine almost by accident. In the late 1990s he was working at what was then the only estate in South Africa using indigenous yeasts and low yields, and his interest in Mediterranean varieties earned him a three month internship at the legendary Domaine Gauby in Calce. Gérard Gauby liked him enough to bring him back for three consecutive vintages, and during that time Tom met and married Nathalie Gauby. The couple founded Matassa in 2002, producing their first vintage entirely in their living room, which Gérard apparently found so distressing that he handed over the old Gauby cellar in 2004. Today the estate farms roughly 15 to 20 hectares of old vines, some over a century old, planted to traditional Catalan varieties including Carignan, Lladoner Pelut, Grenache Gris, Macabeu, and both Muscats. Many of the oldest parcels are field blends, co-planted generations ago. Tom sits at the absolute forefront of the zero-zero movement, and the Coume de l'Olla is his most widely loved expression of it: a wine of extraordinary purity that tastes like nowhere else on earth.

Drink It With — Grilled seafood, paella, charcuterie, aged sheep's milk cheese, Moroccan tagine, roast chicken with preserved lemon, or anything Mediterranean and generous.