2018 Saint-Joseph

Brothers Alexis and Michael Gerin are now fully in charge of things at their family domaine, which rose to prominence under the watch of their dynamic father, Jean-Michel, starting in the late 1980s. Stylistically, the wines haven’t changed much over the last decade, meaning that fruit takes the lead, tannins are round, and plenty of new oak is used – up to 100% for the lieu-dit bottlings. Alexis points out that the wines, despite their often-flamboyant character on release, are intended to age “so the oak has time to calm down and merge into the wine.” Two-thousand seventeen brought a lower-than-normal crop, down by about 20%, and the Gerins said that “you can see the extra concentration in the wines. It was important not to over-extract and to watch the tannins.”