Ventoux Rouge & Ventoux Blanc

Year 3, 2022, is the year of all excesses. Excessive heat with a summer that was reminiscent of the 2003 heat wave. Excessive dryness with only a few drops of rain during the whole vegetative period. Excessive earliness with harvests that began in some parts of the department as early as mid-August.

It is also an excess of work, it must be said, to launch the wines of Domaine Arnia. To make them known, to present them to the press, to professionals, to prescribers and of course to consumers.

As for the weather, the winter of 2022 was dry, the following spring dry and mild despite some late frosts. The months of March, April and May were not as rainy as they should have been, and except for a few millimeters in June, the summer that followed was very hot and dry.

One wonders how some vines could continue to display an insolent greenness until the harvest? The 2022 vintage is therefore one of nature’s resilience in the face of the natural elements that were otherwise unleashed. We are only a few things and we must obviously ask ourselves questions, question the development models that have been imposed if not since the industrial revolution, at least since the end of the Second World War.

The year of all excesses is also an evening organized at the opening of the Découvertes en Vallée du Rhône trade show where Arnia wines were presented in a restaurant in Avignon alongside those of John Malkovich (LQLC) and Sir Ridley Scott (le Mas des Infermières), our neighbors from Oppède and Lacoste. 2022 ended with our presence at two fairs organized by some “sites remarquables sites du gout” in Bonnieux and Châteauneuf-du-Pape. The latter took place in a warm atmosphere punctuated by the World Cup soccer matches, with the memorable victory of the French team over England.

In the cellar, Year 3 is once again a red Ventoux, a GSM harvested on September 29, 2022 and made from the same slopes of Goult as the two previous vintages. These hillsides form the southernmost part of the vast AOC Ventoux appellation, which surrounds the eponymous mountain on its western side, from Vaison la Romaine to Apt. A Ventoux 2022 that won a gold medal at the final of the Concours Général Agricole de Paris, which was held at the opening of the Salon de l’Agriculture in early 2023.

Year 3 is also a white Ventoux, a blend of white grenache, clairette and vermentino. The white grapes were harvested at sunrise on September 1, 2022. This cuvée, the first white wine for Domaine Arnia, was presented blind to competitors at a stage of the French tasting championship organized by Philippe de Cantenac and the Revue du Vin de France in Vinsobres, in the south of the Drôme, in March 2023. This is quite a baptism for a wine with only 600 bottles!