Maury Mas Amiel Vintage 2005

Lot presentation

Maury Mas Amiel Vintage 2005

The wine

This Maury is one of Mas Amiel’s sweet wines and it’s made entirely of Grenache. The term “vintage” here refers to a wine that is fortified and consumed in its youth. The parcels used to make this cuvée are found in Devèze, where the soil contains schist and faces the south. These parcels are between 15 and 35 years old, and they are ploughed as well as sprinkled with compost. The grapes are harvested between the final week of September and the second week of October, and the bunches are sorted twice before being destemmed and lightly pressed. The wine is vinified in concrete vats and thermo-regulated steel containers. It is matured away from the air in topped-up vats for 10 months before being bottled. In the glass, this is a ruby red wine with a nose of red and black fruits. It is at once chewy, fruity and fresh, a flavourful cuvée to pair with dishes that combine sweet and salty elements.

Mas Amiel comes from the name of an engineer who won 10 hectares of vines in 1816 during a card game. Protected to the north by the Corbières hills and to the south by the first slopes of the Pyrenees, Mas Amiel is located near the village of Maury and now spans 100 hectares of vines. Truly part of the renaissance of the Maury appellation that saw winemakers invest to produce higher quality wines and become more ambitious in the sale of their wines. Since then, the vineyard was purchased by Olivier Decelle in 1999 (who also owns vineyards in Saint-Emilion and Fronsac), and it has continued to improve in quality. Dry wines have also made a comeback in Maury and at Mas Amiel (in which it played an important role), and the dry wines have since earned their own AOC and organic certification.
Mas Amiel is certified organic and is in the process of converting to biodynamic certification.


To learn more about Mas Amiel,
click here.