As I can finally catch up to the Fine Wine Source Wine Club Old World selection for June.  I have been playing catch up with my reporting, as Fine Wine Source was under lockdown for about a hundred days, just like most of us were.  The wine shop was not considered essential, because they don’t sell beer, liquor, potato chips and lottery tickets.  Fine Wine Source has survived so far, by doing special orders and special deliveries to his customers.  He has been running specials and contacting his customers on line.  He has also continued with the Club selections and I am sure that it helps to generate some income for the shop as well.

Chateau Juvenal is a residence formed by a Provencal country house and an old farmhouse completely renovated and is called The Castle.  The estate has five bedrooms and three lodgings with a classified 4-star tourist accommodation rating and also offers a swimming pool, a wellness center and a wine estate as well as producing olive oil in an ancestral method.   In 2001, Bernard and Anne-Marie Forestier bought the Provencal castle in order to restore the vineyard and open up a gite; a gite (so that I will keep your from looking it up, is a specific type of holiday accommodation, a home available for rent and they are usually fully furnished and equipped for self-catering.  Chateau Juvenal is located in Ventoux and until 2009 it was known as Cotes de Ventoux when the appellation was completed for the harvest of 1973. It is in the far southeast of the Southern Rhone and abuts Provence.  It is forty kilometers from Avignon. 

Chateau Juvenal “Les Ribes du Vallat” Ventoux 2017 is so named because the plots are distributed on the hillsides (the “ribes” in Provencal) which border the ditch (the “Vallat” in Provencal) which crosses the domain.  In the spring, painters are known to set up their easels and paint different perspectives of the grounds, hence the artist and his easel on the label.  Bernard and Anne-Marie Forestier teamed up with the Alban family, wine makers for three generations to build the wine cellar and to offer new wines.  They have gone the organic route to create the wines.  The wine is a blend of seventy percent Grenache and thirty percent Syrah from plots located at the foot of the hillside (ribes), on the edge of the ditch (vallat).  The wine is described as having the fruity sweetness of the Grenache, and balanced with the minty, licorice and peppery notes of the Syrah.  It is touted as the perfect wine for anything grilled or later for stews.