Domaine des Ouled Thaleb

This is Morocco's oldest working winery. It was founded in 1923 in Benslimane as a tribal co-operative project, and that is where the name comes from: the Ouled Thaleb are the tribe that owns the vineyard land, and whose members also work in the cellar.

It lies in the coastal Zenata appellation, between Casablanca and Rabat. The days are very hot, but the nearby Atlantic cools things down above all at night, which is what allows acidity to hold in a climate like this. The property is large —some two thousand hectares— though only part of it is wine grapes; the rest is mixed farming, all organic. The house led the revival of Moroccan wine in the 1990s.

The Rhône connection came by chance. Alain Graillot, a benchmark for Syrah in Crozes-Hermitage, came across the winery on a cycling trip through Morocco and was struck by the potential of this dry coast. That conversation produced the Syrocco project in 2005, and from the same collaboration —with the Bordeaux oenologist Jacques Poulain, based in Morocco since 1997— comes the Tandem we carry here. Graillot still visits twice a year.