About this WINE
La Bastide St. Vincent
Flanking the evocatively named Dentelles de Montmirail, with vines on the equally evocative Plateau des Garrigues, La Bastide St Vincent is a delightful, family-owned wine domaine with 17th-century origins.
Laurent Daniel works 26 hectares across six villages and 23 parcels, growing the famous trio of Grenache, Syrah and Mourvèdre. He vinifies them separately in a combination of cement and stainless steel. He keeps the temperatures relatively low to allow full and generous expression of the fruit flavours.
Laurent’s wines are often powerful with a typicity and alcohol level that you might expect from the Southern Rhône. In 2021, however, the wines have a different appeal with freshness dominating. The resulting wines have lower alcohol yet still with good concentration and beautiful balance. We really enjoyed his 2021s. They are rather lovely wines allowing the minerality of his soils to shine through. Sadly, his production was 50% down this vintage, so secure a case while you can.
Gigondas
Gigondas has been renowned for the quality of its wines since Roman times, although it was not really until it was classified as a Côtes du Rhône Villages in 1966 that it began to realise its potential. It achieved AC status in 1971 and today produces some of the finest, most underrated and under-priced wines in the Rhône valley; although, for the last two of these at least, probably not for much longer.
Gigondas' 1,200-hectare of rugged vineyards are located east of Châteauneuf-du-Pape, beneath the famous mountains of Dentelles de Montmirail. Gigondas produces sumptuous, plummy reds with a good structure and a sprinkle of pepper. It is similar to (if a touch less slick than) good Châteauneuf-du-Pape which, at its best, it can challenge and even surpass.
Made with a maximum of 80 percent Grenache, combined with at least 15 percent Syrah and/or Mourvèdre, the rest can be made of any of the varieties authorized for Côtes du Rhône – apart from Carignan. The wines can normally be broached after two to three years, while the best repay ageing for 10 years or more. The region also produces dry, Grenache-dominated rosés which are good but can sometimes lack a little vitality.
Recommended Producer: La Bastide St Vincent, Domaine Montirius
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
Perfumed nose of marzipan and sweet liquorice. Seductive, svelte and soft on the palate, this is an absolutely moreish wine, very easy to drink and great alone or with white meat dishes.
Hamish Orr-Ewing, Private Account Manager
Crushed limestone soils, with alluvial fossils and loess make up the rather distinctive terroir surrounding the medieval village of Gigondas, long seem as the leader of the pack of villages that are no longer prepared to sit in the shadows of Châteauneuf-du-Pape. The altitude of Gigondas is very much to its favour, especially as one tries to tame the worst excesses of high levels of alcohol. All somewhat paradoxical in a village famed for its heady and almost rustic wines. No so with this one; a blend of 75% Grenache, 15% Mourvèdre and 10% Syrah, the 2011 has attractive macerated plum and bouquet garni aromas and a pleasing shard of flinty acidity to underpin the concentrated dark fruit.
Simon Field MW, BBR Buyer
Grenache is a generous and indulgent variety; for Laurent Daniel in 2011 the main problem was to ensure that alcoholic and phenolic ripeness achieved some kind of coincidence, but without excessive levels of alcohol. The selection of the correct picking date is essential; only two things are worse than a cooked flavour in a wine and these are flavours which are green and flavours which attain the egregious distinction of being both cooked and green. Fortunately Laurent has avoided all the potential pit-falls and he describes 2011 as a stylistic marriage of 2007 and 2004.
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