2023 Domaine de Gouye, Saint Joseph "Vieilles Vignes"

A great deal of global attention from collectors, sommeliers, and journalists has descended in recent years on the village of Saint-Jean de Muzols. After all, it’s one of the key villages of the Saint-Joseph appellation, and wines from here now regularly command triple-digit price tags. Yet it somehow still feels largely the same as it must have two centuries ago. Buildings constructed from the local granite line dusty streets, and beneath many of the homes you’ll find old cellars with low ceilings, just enough room to ferment and age the miniscule yields from nearby vines. Philippe Desbos is the third generation of his family to work the hillside vines of Saint-jean de Muzols. He and his wife Sylvie farm a handful of sites that’d be the envy of any Syrah producer: the youngest vines here, clinging to hillsides of decomposed granite, are fifty years old. The plant material is ancient, unidentified clones, and the vineyards are steep enough that only humans and horses can work them. In