You hear a lot of talk about the famous galets roulés of Châteauneuf-du-Pape, though the famous appellation has a split personality with some very different terroir expressions. Enter Caroline Charrier and her estate, Font de Courtedune. Caroline's Châteauneuf-du-Pape has been a bit of an insider's secret that comes from parcels of vines planted on more fine, sandy soils versus the galets roulés. Her stunningly perfumed and elegant wines have been compared to those of her illustrious neighbor, Chateau Rayas, with which her estate shares a border. As opposed to the bigger, brooding side of Châteauneuf that you get from the terroirs of Châteauneuf-du-Pape that have a predominance of galets, her sandy soils along with a preference for whole cluster fermentation and avoidance of oak barrels gives us soaring aromatics laden with Provençal flora--violets, lavender, crushed herbs and a somewhat Burgundian style of elegance on the palate. From this terroir we get an intense depth and length that is a hallmark of all the world's great wines.
Coming from a line of vignerons, Caroline fell in love with being in the vineyards and in the cellar at an early age. She believes firmly in being a good steward of the land and chooses to allow that land to shine through in her wines, which she guides from vine to bottle in as minimalistic of a process as possible. In the vineyards, she does not use a tractor and in the cellar, she does not own a destemmer—using only whole clusters— and only relies on old concrete tanks for fermentation and ageing with no oak in sight. Only indigenous yeasts are relied upon for fermentations. The wines are always unfined and unfiltered, offering exquisite terroir expression and incomparable finesse, freshness and balance. The winery and most of the plots of vines for the Châteauneuf-du-Pape are situated in Courthezon, specifically spread over 7 parcels located at La Guigasse, La Crau-Est sur Courthézon, Saint Georges Sud, Fond de Michele, Cristia and finally Le Pointu, but the estate owns and farms plots of vines in a handful off local appellations, such as Côtes-du-Rhône, Côtes-du-Rhône Village, IGP Vaucluse. Caroline believes in the star-power of Grenache, and while some of her plots are co-planted to other varieties such as Counoise, Mourvedre, Syrah and Terret Noir, the final blend on almost all of her wines ends up being mostly Grenache, vintage to vintage.
Caroline would describe her wines as precise, well-rounded and elegant. She follows her own style and her own rules in the cellar and her catchphrase for why she does what she does is always “I do what I like!” Her passion and decisiveness is evident in all her wines, and that’s why we love them.
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