Tasting Notes
We always look forward to the arrival of our supply of Mataburro Quartet. It is created from Grenache Noir, Muscat à Petits Grains, and Muscat d’Alexandrie with directly-pressed Syrah.
The wine is very light. You may find a slight bubble or two when you first open this wine but these will disappear fairly quickly. We should add here that this is often regarded as a fault in winemaking. This is simply because the wine competitions need things to take off marks for and they chose the presence of tiny amounts of carbon dioxide as one of the ways to do this.
They haven’t caught up with the fact that the world of winemaking has moved on, and many natural winemakers, especially those who add no sulphites at any time, often bottle the wine with a tiny amount of residual sugar remaining. Once the wine is bottled this sugar is converted to carbon dioxide by any remaining yeast in the wine. What these winemakers have achieved is a way of controlling any bacteria in the wine which is far more effective than adding sulphites. So, for us, it can hardly be called a fault if that is what the winemaker is trying to achieve.
It underwent semi-carbonic maceration and then was matured in a concrete vat. The fermentation was, of course, carried through with only the natural yeasts on the grapes. The alcohol level is 12%. - Importer Note
Roussillon is the Catalan region of France lying on the Mediterranean side of the country in sight of the Pyrenees mountains that divide Spain from France.
Mataburro is the name of small domaine established in Roussillon by rising stars Laurent Roger and Melissa Ingrand. Their wines are natural and very delicious!
On our visit to their winery and vineyards this year the quality of the wines was as high as ever due to the attention, love and care with which they tend their vineyards and apply to their wines.
Laurent worked for several years at the venerable Paris bar à vin Le Verre Volé and after that returned to Roussillon to work directly with Alain Castex, then of Le Casot des Mailloles.
Towards the end of 2017, armed with what he had learned from Castex, he and Melissa set up Mataburro as their brand and took over the remaining three hectare vineyard from his father and are returning it to its organic past.
In 2019 they started biodynamics and they are using cover crops to improve the soil quality. In fact, during our morning of walking around all of their vineyards in the spring of 2022 we were very impressed with their understanding of the role the soil plays in the vineyard. The same applied in 2024 when we visited.
Alain Castex taught Laurent the importance of the soil. He also had this concept reinforced by Tom Lubbe and Axel Prüfer.
Now, Mataburro consists of almost 5 hectares of vines, split into several parcels near Rivesaltes and Espira-de-l’Agly in Roussillon, Laurent and Melissa’s objective is always to make fresh wines which have low % alcohol, wines that are suitable for drinking in the hot Mediterranean climate in which they live. It also makes them very welcome arrivals for this time of year in Australia.
The winemaking at Mataburro usually consists of short macerations of whole bunches with no foot stomping to limit the extraction. They believe that foot stomping makes wines that are less delicate.
All macerations take place in fibreglass with, for the most part, the wines aged in stainless steel. The wines are not filtered and have no added sulphites. Laurent recommends serving all Mataburro wines in a carafe. - Importer Note