Southern Rhône Region:
Domaine d'Aeria Cairanne
Importers find producers in many different ways: at trade shows, through the press, by word of mouth. Rolland Gap, the owner of Domaine d'Aeria, was brought to my attention by a pharmacist in the Gers, nearly 400 miles away from the Rhône. Norbert Labernede is the lone  inhabitant of Montreal-du-Gers who actually collects wine. In 1999, he gave me a bottle of a 1996 Cairanne he had bought from Rolland Gap.
The contents of the bottle impressed me -- bursting with red fruit and peppery spice, yet with plenty of dusty tannin to make it ideal with food and enjoy years down the road.
The soils of Cairanne
I contacted Gap immediately and we corresponded for a number of months. In January 2001 I made a trip to the Rhône and met him for the first time. Now sometimes producers are down to earth, other times a bit bourgeois, occasionally downright a-holes. Ideally they are downright cool like Rolland Gap -- someone you really want to do business with. Shown above are several pictures of the man, atop his cement tanks, pulling the Prestige from foudre and below a blow-up of an oddity on the "winery" wall-a calender from 1964! Needless to say, time moves slowly in this traditional chai.
Rolland Gap at Domaine d'Aeria
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