Tasting Notes & Ratings
Grape
51% Carcaghjolu, 42% Minustellu, 7% Sciaccarellu.
Tasting notes
Quartz Rouge shows a vivid, deep red hue and an expressive nose built on dark cherry and wild bramble fruit, lifted by the garrigue-scented herbal lift typical of Ajaccio's indigenous varieties. The palate is fleshy yet fine-boned, its granite-derived minerality giving lift and precision to ripe red and black fruit, with supple, well-integrated tannins and a persistent, slightly savoury finish. It is a wine that trades power for elegance, in keeping with Gérard Courrèges' gentle, wild-yeast winemaking.
More About The Winery
Domaine de Vaccelli was founded in 1962 by Roger Courrèges, a pied-noir vigneron who settled in the Taravo valley near Cognocoli-Monticchi in southern Corsica; his son Alain expanded the estate through the 1970s, hand-carving cellars into the rock, before Gérard and Nathalie Courrèges, the third generation, took over in 2000. The vines grow on sandy-granitic hillside soils at 50-160m elevation, farmed organically since 2008 and certified since 2019, with low yields, wild-yeast fermentation and long, gentle élevage in old barrels. The domaine has become one of the reference names for serious, terroir-driven Ajaccio wine, built on Corsica's native grape varieties rather than international ones.