Castets

Identity

Castets is a black variety of the South-West — the right bank of the Garonne, probably the Gironde — that survives only in Provence, among Palette's permitted grapes.

A Bordeaux variety kept alive by a Provençal appellation of twenty-four: that is the kind of displacement only a conservatory produces. It is no longer at home anywhere, and it is somewhere all the same.

The profile we should have kept

This is the most frustrating entry in this batch, because its characteristics are good.

It is vigorous but not very fertile, which is the combination every grower now wants: a plant that grows well and carries little gives concentrated fruit. It must be long-pruned to compensate, which the source recommends.

It is little affected by downy mildew, one of the two diseases that dictate spray calendars. In a vineyard trying to reduce inputs, that is a quality worth a great deal.

And its tannin is medium to high with low acidity: a red of structure.

Vigorous, low-yielding, mildew-resistant, tannic. On paper nothing explains its disappearance from Bordeaux. This entry does not know, and no source opened here explains it — a real gap, and more honest to state than a hypothesis.

In the vineyard

Late bud burst, mid-season ripeness. Late budding adds protection from spring frost to an already favourable profile.

In the glass

Medium to high tannin, low acidity. This entry's single descriptor is a reading of that register, not a quotation.

No single-variety bottling is documented in the sources consulted. For a grape whose agronomic profile is this inviting, that ignorance is an irritation.

Where it is named

At Palette only, an accessory variety.

What this entry does not say

Its parentage, undocumented. The reasons for its disappearance from the Gironde. And whether it survives in a conservatory or outside appellations — the question that would decide whether it could be replanted at all.