Rest assured that if the Brunier family ever had even a hint of doubt that their epic plateau of La Crau, with old vines swimming in its famed sea of stones, did not give remarkable fruit, there simply wouldn’t be any Vieux Télégraphe made that vintage. That phenomenon remains extremely rare, the last occurrence being when a full-blown tornado tore through the vines in the middle of the growing season!
     September has come, and with it, as always, the arrival of the new release of VT, freshly racked from large, French oak casks after a two-year slumber, bottled unfiltered, and shipped to our shores.
     This year’s arrival, the 2024 vintage, is an essential piece to have in one’s VT collection. It is a wine of precision, balance, elegance, and silken texture…

During the heat wave in Europe a few months ago, I was bopping around Corsica with a couple of colleagues and a sunburn. I imagine the rugged, maquis-laden landscape always has an arid feel to it in the summer, but we were unprepared for the scorcher we experienced (we ran out of sunscreen on day two). For the seasoned vignerons we visited, it was business as usual. When we arrived at the Leccias’, we found Yves and his son, Orsu, outside the cellar working doggedly on some sort of tractor engine repair. Yves’ wife, Sandrine, agreed to show us the vineyards, and we piled into a 4×4 utility van—no AC, in case you were wondering. But from up in the vines, we could see all the way to the sea, and the amphitheater in which we stood seemed to be funneling a gentle breeze from the coast…