Domaine des Homs 2003, V.d.P. des Coteaux de Peyriac. **HERITAGE WINE**

Colour: very dark red with purple.
Nose:  some reduction at first, but than an impressive array of  intense, complex and extremely clean, earthy and spicy fruit nuances, brambles, cherries and berries, minerals, both compact and expressive, with depth and outstanding purity. Intriguing clear and open style, with freshness and ripeness.
Taste: again great purity, compact, well knit together with ample, delicious, spicy and ripe tannins, minerals, ample alcohol, but perfectly compensated with extract, intensity and a fresh acidity, depth, power and a myriad of the cleanest and clearest fruit (brambles, cherries), impressive balance and a lively tension between the constituents.
Finish: still young, powerful, intense, quite long for a Vin de Pays, with loads of beautiful tannins, mineral freshness, ripeness, impressive fruit and spices.

* A great "modest" wine crammed with impressive fruit with exemplary purity, great balance, intensity, ripeness, freshness and liveliness.  This wine is so natural and honest in style, begging for good food and able to keep you interested with new impressions glass after glass.

- Just started to show well, will improve during 2005 : more fruit, complexity, may keep until 2008, but it is the young enthusiastic fruit that makes this wine so interesting and delicious. Maybe the excitement will be substituted with earthy nuances in a few years, I prefer the amazing fruit of this (young) wine.
 

- This shows how good a wine from a modest provenance can get. The young en enthusiastic producer Jean-Marc de Crozals is still experimenting to find his way in style, but this wine shows he is on the right track and also the great potential of his vineyards with old vines. This wine easily sweeps away many of the competition with more prestigious A.O.C.'s  His Minervois is even more impressive and has greater potential. A modern but highly skilled and passionate expression of this very fine terroir, an outstanding example how to construct a wine with powerful tannins, great intensity and ripeness next to a lively freshness and exemplary purity of fruit. No heaviness or over extraction, no forced or over processed fruit, no make-up from sexy and obvious wood, just fruit in its most pure and natural form. The style in which French wines can excel and distinguish themselves from wines from any other country.

- lotnr.: L 4096

- tasted: 26-01-’05 retasted many times untill 28-04-2005: consistent notes.

- estimated retail price ca. 6 euro

- production: ca. 10.000 bottles (potentially 20.000)

- Domaine des Homs, Mr. Jean-Marc de Crozals, 11160 Rieux - Minervois, tel.: + 33-468 781051 / mobile: + 33-609749492 / fax.: + 33-468 781051 / e-mail: jm.decrozals@free.fr / web site: www.domainedeshoms.com