Tasted in Fleurie with Sylvain Paturaux, 22 February 2024
Domaine des 2 Fontaines
77 Route des Raclets
69820 Fleurie
Tel: +33 6 62 61 80 24
This a relatively new domaine, Sylvain I started in 2020- I tasted his wines for the first time in 2023 and wanted to follow up.
Sylvain has 3 cuvées, an assembly cuvée bottled in April and two parcel selections; ‘La Madone’ which is plain south facing ‘which doesn’t have a lot of concentration but it has an elegance.‘ and La Prele, plain north-facing and later ripening and this has elevage in barrel – bottled in October – the Madone bottled sooner after tank elevage – “and I couldn’t have wished for such success. Of course, there are still plenty of sales in bulk, about half in 2023.”
Sylvain on 2023:
“The volume was good – not too much and about 13° – no sugar needed!! I will already make a small first bottling next week as most of the 22s have been sold.”
Sylvain on 2022:
“It was dry and hot, very hot – early harvesting 31st August despite being quite at altitude and having a lot of the vines facing north. It’s an interesting balance, plenty of acidity but nearly 14° partly because of concentration. I think because we had good acidity we had no problems with the fermentations – 21 was a problem but that was more the onset of the malos – but nothing like that in 22.”
The wines…
A very young domaine where the quality is extremely high – one cuvée is certainly for fans of the barrel – but all are excellent.
2022 Fleurie
Nice deep colour. A fresh purity of red fruit here – you could say very Fleurie! In the mouth there is lots of wine – this is concentrated and growing in intensity. Lots of flavour energy here. I think I would wait for 2 years here but the finish has a certain trailing elegance. Lovely wine.
2022 Fleurie La Madone
Hmm – that’s also very lovely – more floral perfumed over quite some depth of aroma. Larger scale in the mouth – but with more open and accessible flavour – a certain fluidity to this flavour – all is more accessible and the finish holds broader and deeper flavours. That’s really excellent and it will only improve for 5-10 years.
2022 Fleurie La Presle
This with 3-5 year-old barrel elevage.
A really deep nose that’s topped with higher notes that contain plenty of barrel today. The barrel has really delivered exquisite texture but the flavour of the barrels is the main component today – to the extent that the wine also has extra finishing bitters. For my likes, I couldn’t drink this today – I would return in 5+ years to see how things are going. But this is concentrated, balanced and superbly textured.