Up until the 1960s, wine in Corsica was produced, for the most part, on small family-owned plots that made just enough wine to last a family through the year. Often each family in a village would own a terrace on a nearby slope, donkeys would carry the harvest back to the village, and the grapes would be crushed by foot and vinified in stone chambers carved out of the rock in the cellars. Vines weren’t seen as anything much different from the garden or the pasture, providing life’s essentials for living off the land.
     That is the Corsica that Muriel Giudicelli recalls from her childhood, when her great-grandfather would take her out into the family vines in Patrimonio, where the sights and smells of the vineyard left a deep impression. It goes without saying that although the great-grandfather had certainly never heard of the word, the plot was beyond organic, having never seen a drop of any chemicals and being carefully worked according to the cycles of the moon. Modern times caught up to Muriel and her family, so her parents took her with them to the mainland to make a living, and the vines became a distant memory. After several decades away, Muriel felt a strong calling to return. With the help of a few key people, including Antoine Arena, she patched together her vineyards and a cellar, and Domaine Giudicelli was born. The spectacularly preserved natural beauty and cultural heritage of Patrimonio were, and are, to Muriel, its greatest strengths. For her, it was out of the question to dishonor Patrimonio by throwing chemicals into the vines or into the wines, so biodynamic farming and non-interventionist winemaking was the only coherent way forward. To this day, Muriel speaks of Patrimonio in reverent terms and remains in awe of how limestone, schist, and granite all intertwine on her parcels in the famed Campo Gallo sub-region, a terroir that makes her wines unlike any other we bring in from Patrimonio. Her rouge—aged for a year and a half in large casks and then bottle-aged a while longer before release—is vivid, youthful, and aromatically potent. Give it some air when you open it and watch it evolve seamlessly in the glass. It is soft and juicy, with perfectly ripe black fruit notes, while the tannins are quite present yet harnessed just right. Her blanc, also aged long on its lees and in bottle, has the familiar saline side that we love from Corsica, as well as a unique, opulent, stately manner replete with noble bitter notes.
     “When I was a child in Corsica,” Muriel recalls, “my mother fed me healthy fruits and vegetables from here, which were of course organic. It’s self-evident to me to continue these good practices on my own land.” Indeed, I tend to picture Muriel’s wines as freshly picked from the garden—ripe, healthy, and ready to eat. We hope you will enjoy these latest additions from Corsica, from a small, yet important garden.