Domaine de Trevallon was founded on an artistic whim in the 1970s by Eloi Durrbach in the Alpilles hills above Saint-Etienne-du-Gres, near Les Baux-de-Provence, and has become one of Provence's leading estates - so admired that Aubert de Villaine introduced importer Kermit Lynch to it in 1978. Because the wine is a roughly equal blend of cabernet sauvignon and syrah, it sits outside the Les Baux appellation and is labelled IGP Alpilles. The vines grow on rugged limestone slopes cleared from garrigue, farmed organically. After several rainless summers, 2021 brought small but beneficial rains of 20mm in July and 25mm in August, and one of the coolest recent summers, averaging 24C, giving fresh, vibrant fruit.

The 2021 is around half cabernet sauvignon and half syrah, fermented with no de-stemming and no added yeast or sulphur, in a deliberately non-interventionist manner. It is aged for about 24 months in foudres and barrels, with racking kept to a strict minimum so the lees at the bottom of the barrels continue to nourish the wine. It is fined with fresh egg white and bottled without filtration. The result is tightly youthful and structured, with blue-flower and dark-berry aromatics, concentrated ripe blackberry, sloe and bitter dark-chocolate tannins, black pepper and allspice, at around 13.5% alcohol and built for long ageing.