This late-release version sports a broad and slightly mature feel, with roasted meat, dried bay leaf, tobacco and smoldering alder wood notes swirling around a core of steeped plum, blackberry and fig fruit flavors. Shows a lovely tug of loam at the very end. Distinctive. Syrah, Grenache and Roussanne. Drink now through 2024. 1,000 cases made, 200 cases imported.

Starting with the 2011 IGP Vaucluse Heloise, the Viognier component has been replaced by Roussanne, so the 2011 is 61% Syrah, 35% Grenache and 4% Roussanne. It offers hints of smoked black olives on the nose, followed by a wine that's full-bodied and sturdy on the palate, with some rustic, meaty notes that linger on the finish. Give it a couple of years in the cellar, then drink it over the next decade.

Deep crimson with very little sign of age in the colour. On the nose this is seductive like the northern Rhône in its complex peppery, smoky sophistication but with an added smoky bacon sweetness. On the palate, riper than the northern Rhône and more generous, still with lovely peppery Syrah flavour, plus a slight spicy meatiness and just a hint of leathery complexity and oak's sweet spice. The tannins are à point – ie you could drink this now, with food, as it was intended, or you could certainly cellar it for at least another decade...

Also brilliant stuff, the 2011 IGP Vaucluse Heloise (70% Syrah, 20-25% Grenache and the rest Viognier) offers lots of blackberry fruits, peppery herbs and smoked earth aromas and flavors. Medium to full-bodied, nicely concentrated, yet with an incredible sense of elegance and finesse, no doubt imparted by the limestone soils and higher elevation vineyards, this beautiful Syrah will continue drinking beautifully for another decade or more.