2009 Côte Rôtie, Cuvee Du Plessy, Domaine G. Barge

Domaine Barge

The wiry Gilles Barge is President of the Côte Rôtie Growers` Syndicat as well as running his own 6-hectare domaine. The majority of his holdings are in the Côte Brune and he produces rich long-lived Côte Rôties. He has no truck with the current fashion for destalking and ferments with all the stems still intact. The wines are then aged in large wooden piéces and foudres and are bottled unfined and unfiltered.

Crucially his final blends usually include around 5% Viognier and this gives the wines elegance and finesse. These are marvellously perfumed Côte Rôties that require 5-6 years bottle age but will still continue to improve for up to 15 years.

Syrah/Shiraz

A noble black grape variety grown particularly in the Northern Rhône where it produces the great red wines of Hermitage, Cote Rôtie and Cornas, and in Australia where it produces wines of startling depth and intensity. Reasonably low yields are a crucial factor for quality as is picking at optimum ripeness. Its heartland, Hermitage and Côte Rôtie, consists of 270 hectares of steeply terraced vineyards producing wines that brim with pepper, spices, tar and black treacle when young. After 5-10 years they become smooth and velvety with pronounced fruit characteristics of damsons, raspberries, blackcurrants and loganberries.

It is now grown extensively in the Southern Rhône where it is blended with Grenache and Mourvèdre to produce the great red wines of Châteauneuf du Pape and Gigondas amongst others. Its spiritual home in Australia is the Barossa Valley, where there are plantings dating as far back as 1860. Australian Shiraz tends to be sweeter than its Northern Rhône counterpart and the best examples are redolent of new leather, dark chocolate, liquorice, and prunes and display a blackcurrant lusciousness.

South African producers such as Eben Sadie are now producing world- class Shiraz wines that represent astonishing value for money.