Wine of the Week 19 – a superior Bordeaux Supérieur

Vineyards in Entre-Deux-Mers.

I’m not a great one for the cheaper end of Bordeaux, the sort of wine that was described as ‘luncheon claret’ when I joined the wine trade. Red Bordeaux more than any other type of wine really ought to make you stop, think and smile. Claret – any red Bordeaux – can be the most thought provoking, elegant and refined wines in the world, but of course wine like that costs money. Sad to say that cheaper Bordeaux only hints at what is possible, while downright cheap Bordeaux almost never has anything about it to suggest how good the wines from this region can be.

I say almost never, because I think I have tasted an exception. I was tasting an array of value for money claret and this was by some distance the best of the wines at under £10 a bottle – no mean feat when you consider that if you strip the retailer’s merging, excise duty, VAT, packaging costs and transport out, this wine cost something like £1.70!

Behind the scenes at an Entre-Deux-Mers Château.

2011 Château Darzac Cuvée Réserve
A.C. Bordeaux Supérieur
Vignobles Claude Barthe
76% Merlot, 13% Cabernet Franc and 11% Cabernet Sauvignon partially aged in oak barrels for 8 months. The Château has been owned and run by the same family for generations and although they are white wine specialists – Darzac is in the Entre-Deux-Mers appellation for whites and about 8 km south east of Libourne – this is a very good effort indeed. By the way incase you are wondering a Bordeaux Supérier can be produced anywhere within Bordeaux, but is made according to slightly stricter rules that standard Bordeaux. These rules include higher minimal alcohol levels and longer ageing times.
Bright, slightly purple, but basically ruby red.
The nose is slightly spicy and cedary with plums and red fruit.
The palate is clean and smooth with lovely raspberry and blackcurrant fruit, there is real freshness here from the acidity which gives it a feel of elegance, this is helped by the merest touch of coffee and cedary spice. Smoky tannins dominate the finish at the moment, giving more structure, but they are not aggressive at all. It is a fruity wine, but not in a blockbuster style, indeed it is a classic medium-bodied, dry red Bordeaux.

I drank this over 2 days and it was much better by the second day. I approached this with some trepidation, but it is a nice wine and gives some idea of what claret should be like, albeit in an easier drinking more everyday style. Try it with steak-frîtes, cheese or meat dishes – 86/100 points.

Available in the UK for £8.00 a bottle from Asda.

This is exactly the sort of claret that will win Bordeaux friends even at what passes for a cheap price nowadays, do try it sometime.

 

Wine of the Week 18 – a white wine with a difference

Vineyards near Béziers.

I have recently been touring the beautiful Saint-Chianian area of France’s Languedoc-Roussillon region. I learnt a lot about the place and tasted a wide range of the wines produced there. It seemed to me that the general quality was very high, but much to my surprise it was the white wines that particularly excited me. I will write about Saint-Chinian soon, as the area produces lots of really exciting wines that you should try. I flew in to Montpellier airport and on the way to Saint-Chinian, while on the outskirts of Béziers, I passed the turning for an estate that I have kept meaning to mention in theses pages.

Domaine Sainte Rose is one of those estates that I keep finding nowadays, an exemplary producer of exciting French wines, but the people who run it are not only not from the region, they are not even French – Domaine Jones is another stunning example. Charles and Ruth Simpson bought this beautiful estate in 2002 and set out to produce the sort of wines that they liked to drink, world class wines that reflected modern international wine making rather than focussing on the traditions of their region. To achieve this they decided to not make any Appellation Contrôlée wines at all, but to stick to Vin de Pays / Indication Géographique Protégé / IGP.

The rugged and beautiful landscape of the Languedoc.

In fact they label their wines as  IGP / Vin de Pays Côtes de Thongue rather than the wider, more famous Vin de Pays d’Oc which is interesting and gives them a nice slightly romantic local focus as the River Thongue passes right by the estate.

So far I have only tried one of their wines, but it is a fabulous wine that is made from Roussanne, one of the wonderful white grapes used in the South of France. It is often blended with Marsanne and Viognier or Grenache Blanc and Grenache Gris.

2013 Domaine Sainte Rose ‘La Nuit Blanche’ Roussanne
IGP Côtes de Thongue
100% Roussanne which is harvested at night, hence the name ‘the sleepless night’. Night harvesting retains the grape’s acidity and freshness and protects the grapes from enduring the heat of the day. The wine was fernmented and aged in barrel to make it rich and complex.
I really enjoy this wine and so does everyone else when I show it at tastings, even those who think they don’t like oak. It has a seductive charm and lovely herbal, creamy, oily aromatics – it smells like garlic, rosemary and olive oil cooking on your roast potatoes. There are fresher notes too, lemon, lemon pith and grapefruit too. The palate is full-bodied, full-flavoured and utterly delicious with a soft, nutty, creamy texture – from the lees stirring – there is rich apricot and lemon fruit too together with herbs and some gentle spice. Try this wonderful wine with richer poultry dishes, cream sauces or a rich fish pie, it would even work with roast pork or slow cooked shoulder of lamb as long as there was plenty of garlic, herbs, lemon and olive oil rubbed into the meat – 90/100 points.

 Available in the UK at  £12.99 from Majestic Wine Warehouses.

This is a lovely wine, very drinkable and very food friendly too, so do try it, even if Roussanne is a new grape variety for you – you never know, it might become your new favourite.

Wine of the Week 17 – a delicious & great value Cabernet

My Wine of the Week is a favourite value wine of mine. It is a Cabernet Sauvignon from Greece, which is not exactly a place that is famous for Cabernet, but this wine really is delicious and worth trying. I love Greek wines and think they are sadly neglected and underrated by the UK consumer. I greatly enjoyed touring the country’s wine regions in 2012 as Greece has a lot of excellent wines to offer and this wine might well be a good place to start your own personal Greek wine odyssey – remember to click all the links.

Some of Tsantali’s beautiful vineyards

Greece is culturally a white wine drinking nation – certainly their whites are superb with their cuisine – but, Santorini aside, most of their most famous wines are red and made from indigenous grapes at that. So, this is a relatively rare chance to see what an international grape can be like from Greece and I think it is an extremely good wine.

Vineyards in northern Greece.

It is made by the excellent Tsantali company, which is one of Greece’s most important and dynamic wine producers and makes wine in many different regions in the country. Tsantali products are highly visible in Greece as they distil ouzo and act as a negociant marketing wines from all over the country. The real focus of this family company though is as grape growers, vineyard owners and winemakers. This particular wine comes from grapes grown on the beautiful, sun-drenched Halkidiki Peninsula near Thessalonika in northern Greece. The dry conditions there lend themselves especially well to organic farming as fungal diseases are very rare.

2011 Tsanatli Organic Cabernet Sauvignon
Halkidiki P.G.I.
Tsantali Vineyards
The wine is aged for 8 months in new French oak.
This really is a terrific Cabernet, the nose is dominated by loads of sweet ripe fruit, soft spice and some mint with even a touch of dried fruit showing it comes from somewhere hot. There is a lovely rich texture to the palate of ripe cassis and blackberry, but also slightly stewed fruit giving a big mouthfeel with smooth tannins that are still a little bit tight, which gives the wine an elegant and fine feel. This terrific wine just gets better and better in the glass, it is a rich powerful wine, medium-bodied wine, but very well balanced with a lovely feel of elegance about it. What’s more it is made from organically grown grapes.

Perfect with roast lamb, as well as any other joints, rich dishes and meats, a terrific steak frîtes wine too – 90/100 points.

A great bargain at £9.49 a bottle in the UK from Waitrose & Ocado.

Wine of the Week 16 – a great Faugères

The Languedoc region, the more easterly bit of Languedoc-Roussillon, makes a lot of wine and much of it is good, some of it is very good indeed.

It is the region of France with the most generous climate, so it is where the French can produce attractive, fruit-forward everyday drinking wine wine that can take on the New World at the lower price points. Much of it is Vin de Pays or IGP level wine labelled by grape variety.

Languedoc doesn’t only produce lower price wines and varietally labelled wine though. The whole region is a patchwork of appellation contrôllée wine regions too. Most of these are red – with the most obvious exception being the popular Picpoul de Pinet – and make their wines from blends that typically include Grenache, Syrah, Mourvèdre, Carignan and Cinsault. As such the wines often have a similar feel to those of the southern Rhône, the landscape and climate are not dissimilar either.

The rugged, but beautiful terrain of Faugères.

It is a shame that UK consumers have to be coaxed in to accepting these wines on their merits, rather than only wanting them to be cheap, as some of France’s most exciting red wines hail from this part of the world at the moment. Yes down-right cheap versions of these appellations are available, but they will only give you a limited idea of what the regions can do. Instead treat yourself to the very best that the Languedoc can offer and it will still be cheaper than wines of equivalent quality from other regions of France.

My Wine of the Week is a glorious red wine from the Languedoc-Roussillon region and more specifically the Faugères appellation. This was part of the Coteaux du Languedoc – now just AC Languedoc – appellation until 1982 when the separate Faugères AC was created for reds and rosés – whites followed in 2005. The soil here is mainly schist, or decayed slate – although there are also some pockets of clay and limestone -, which is a very well drained soil and heats up quickly too, which helps ripeness. Schist also seems to introduce minerality into wines, or at least it appears that wines grown in schist have mineral characters. The climate is Mediterranean as you might expect with long, hot summers and short cold winters. The coastal influence is important and tempers the otherwise harsh conditions in this dramatic and rugged landscape.

2011 Domaine de Cébène Les Bancèls Faugères
AC Faugères
Languedoc-Roussillon
Brigitte Chevalier, Domaine de Cébène

I have never tasted any of Brigitte Chevalier’s wines before, which has been a mistake as on this showing they are superb. Brigitte is also a negociant producing a fascinating range of wines that I want to get to know. However her passion appears to be her own estate of Domaine de Cébène. Her aim is to make elegant wines, fine wines even, or as she puts it ‘vins du nord’ in this hot southern region. In order to make these elegant wines she has planted her Grenache and Syrah vines so that they are north facing, this reduces the impact of the sun, so retains freshness in the grapes. The vineyards are on terraced hillsides at around 320 metres above sea level and all the farming is organic with everything done by hand. Hand harvesting allows for selective picking and there is a second selection in the winery too. The 2011 is only Brigitte’s third vintage, but this unoaked blend of 60% Syrah, 20% Grenache and 20% Mourvèdre (north facing vines) tastes much more assured than that.

Brigitte Chevalier

The colour is a lovely deep purle with dashes of ruby and crimson.
The nose gives wafts of richly vibrant fruit, blackberries, plums, even some raspberry and strawberry, together with earth notes, spice, truffles, mushrooms, liquorice and wild herbs.
The palate is very smooth with concentrated fruit including deep raspberry as well as the blackberries and cherries. The tannins are soft and there is a creamily ripe texture to the fruit. There are savoury, smoky garrigue characters, even slightly iodine and medicinal – in a good way like malt whiskey. There is plenty of juiciness here from the fruit, but a core of elegance keeps this wine focused and fine.
Multi faceted and a serious wine, but it isn’t po faced at all, this is delicious and enjoyable to drink, as well as clearly being a complex and lovely wine. I am sure it would age very well indeed – should you keep a few bottles aside.
If you like things like Châteauneuf-du-Pape, then you will enjoy this very much – 91/100 points.

Available in the UK from £15 per bottle from Leon Stolarski Fine Wines, Vine Trail, Selfridges and other stockists.

I know it isn’t the easiest wine to find, but it is well worth seeking out – go on, give it a try, the quality that this unassuming region can produce might delight you as much as it does me.