About this WINE
Southern Rhône Blend
The vast majority of wines from the Southern Rhône are blends. There are 5 main black varieties, although others are used and the most famous wine of the region, Châteauneuf du Pape, can be made from as many as 13 different varieties. Grenache is the most important grape in the southern Rhône - it contributes alcohol, warmth and gentle juicy fruit and is an ideal base wine in the blend. Plantings of Syrah in the southern Rhône have risen dramatically in the last decade and it is an increasingly important component in blends. It rarely attains the heights that it does in the North but adds colour, backbone, tannins and soft ripe fruit to the blend.
The much-maligned Carignan has been on the retreat recently but is still included in many blends - the best old vines can add colour, body and spicy fruits. Cinsault is also backtracking but, if yields are restricted, can produce moderately well-coloured wines adding pleasant-light fruit to red and rosé blends. Finally, Mourvèdre, a grape from Bandol on the Mediterranean coast, has recently become an increasingly significant component of Southern Rhône blends - it often struggles to ripen fully but can add acidity, ripe spicy berry fruits and hints of tobacco to blends.
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Description
La Cadène is a blend of Philippe’s three best parcels of old-vine Grenache, Syrah and Mourvèdre. This powerful yet fresh wine has an astonishingly rich garrigue nose and a nicely evolved palate, with primary fruit pleasingly syncopated to secondary, more savoury notes. Drink 2016 to 2020.
Simon Field MW - Rhône Buyer
Philippe Chaume Arnaud describes the style of his 2013s as ‘entre deux chaises’ by which I think he means between the north and south of the valley, which is not, in any event, an uncommon way to view these very pure wines. The vines are located in the most northern cru of the southern vineyards, where it has been easy for Syrah to step into the breach for the beleaguered Grenache. He observes, slightly surprisingly, that two features in 2013 were relatively low acidity and the need for extended cuvaison times, neither of which-tasting the results-appear to have been remotely detrimental to quality.
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