serbal petit Verdot 2024

Atamisque

The best stories are the true stories, and this one goes like this…

There we were in October 2023, feeling very lucky indeed to be staying high up under the gleaming silver of Mount Tupungato as guests of Bodega Atamisque, again, after a long time away. At the end of our day of tasting and talking, we retired to the splendidly appointed lodge to rest up and at the top of the vineyard there we saw a simple wooden structure in the sunshine, basically a rudimentary shelf displaying the entire Serbal range in empty bottles. But there was one extra bottle that we didn’t recognise, a Petit Verdot! Now, we knew Atamisque had a small plot of PV but it had always been kept as a blending component for the top-end wines, or so we thought. We duly phoned Philippe Caraguel, the winemaker…

What’s all this then, we ask quizzically, Serbal Petit Verdot? “Ah oui”, he said in his strong Franco-Mendocino accent. “I forgot to tell you about that.” He sent a bottle up to the lodge that evening to help us wash down our tea and we ordered a pallet then and there. To cut the story short, we felt then and we still feel now this is the best value Petit Verdot in the world. It has the burning purity of a spear piercing the mediocrity of modern life, the stoney black fruit infused intensity of this fabulous grape, unhindered by oak and redolent of its innate hint of graphite and, best of all, you don’t need a knife and fork to get into it.

This wine has been incredibly well received by our many trade customers (thank you), to the extent that we literally can’t get quite enough of it. Thank you, Philippe, thank you Atamisque, thank you serendipity.