Domaine Faillenc has the ruins of a roman winery on the property. We don’t know for sure how good the wine was, but people in what later became Corbieres clearly didn’t stop making wine, and the Domaine’s ‘modern’ era began in the seventeenth century when a soldier serving Louis XIV returned home planted a vineyard outside the tiny village of Douzens. Today, it’s just 8 hectares of Syrah, Grenache, and Cinsault planted on stony soils. Dominique and Maria-Thérèse Gilbert and their son Jean-Baptiste farm organically at the foot of mount Alaric. The vineyards are buffeted by Mediterranean winds and rarely visited by rain, resulting in a rich, dense, and savory red wine with aromas of cassis pastille, anise, garrigue, blueberry, black cherry and white pepper. The palate is fleshy, full, and brimming with midnight black fruit, pepper and potting soil, fennel, and earth woven around stern, chalky tannins. If you have a fireplace, this wine is best drunk next to a warm fire with a stew that simmered for hours.