A wonderful thing about Didier Barral is that he is too cut off from the rest of the world to know what the latest wine trends are, and too busy in his vines to care. On the surface he’s a winemaker, but it may be more correct to say he is a skilled farmer who obsesses over the small details and health of his soils, his various crops, his pigs and cows, his vines, and guides thriving grapes into vibrant wine. What you get is not what is hip or hot, but what the farm gives that vintage. The long macerations, slow presses, and years of aging in old barrels, during which he intervenes rarely and gently (nothing is ever added—not even a dollop), allow the juice to soak in the ambience and scents of the rural surroundings. The result is something completely unclassifiable, delightfully rustic, and totally wild: a mix of brambly aromatics, fresh-cut hay, meaty, gamy tannins, and chewy black fruit. Those initiated to Jadis will know what I mean, and those uninitiated really need to try it to believe it. Take your time with it, though. Let it breathe, and give it your full attention. It is a living piece of a distant farm delivered to your glass from one of the remotest corners of France.

You can count on just two hands the growers we’ve worked with for four decades or more. Joining such families as the Peyrauds (Domaine Tempier) and the Bruniers (Vieux Télégraphe) in that company are the Laboucariés, who, for years, have crafted ethereal and delicious rosés and soulful, terroir-driven reds in the Corbières appellation halfway between Montpellier and the Spanish border. For this perennially over-delivering cuvée, Bruno Laboucarié blends two parts Carignan with one part Grenache and a splash of Syrah to produce a vibrant country red reminiscent of black cherries and spice.

This deep, tannic, long Corsican rouge is a good reminder that a big red can still be a fun red. After a bit of aeration, you’ll find this Niellucciu to be loaded with flavor, with a stony finish that leaves you always wanting more. The Carco vineyard is now legendary in Patrimonio, the Arena family having consistently provided some of the top wines the appellation has to offer from these vines since they revived and replanted the fallow ground in 1987.