Boulevard Napoléon L’Angely Carignan 2022
£21.75
The wine
Carignan yields heavily when young, which is why it was planted across the Languedoc for bulk wine, but old bush vines on poor schist give real structure and a garrigue edge.
Boulevard Napoléon began when Trevor Gulliver, of the London restaurant St John, started making wine from vines beside his holiday home in the Minervois. The Carignan here comes from old plantings of exactly the sort that were widely grubbed up before anyone valued them.
The producer
Boulevard Napoléon
View all Boulevard Napoléon winesBoulevard Napoléon is the Minervois estate of Trevor Gulliver, co-founder of the celebrated London restaurant St. John. A house bought to unwind became a wine project, named after the street in La Livinière where the winery sits, a knowing echo of St. John's own street in Farringdon.
With a lifetime's eye for quality, honed importing wine for St. John since 1996, Trevor set out to make something singular. The wines are drawn from remarkable old Minervois vineyards, some planted well over a century ago, on sandstone, limestone-clay and schist.
Old vines, low yields and a careful hand give wines of bright, ripe fruit and a clear sense of place. As Trevor puts it, they did not start from scratch to make ordinary.
