It’s our final day in the Rhône valley and we are beginning to flag a little as we wend our way out of Orange once again at 8.30am. We’ve long since given up trying to convince friends and family that tasting wine is an arduous task, but you can have too much of a good thing. We are now well into three figures for wines tasted and considered this week for our Rhône 2009 vintage report, so we are both looking forward to getting back home. Yet it’s hard to feel sorry for ourselves as we roll up at Domaine Saint Gayan in 20 degree sunshine. Its 9am and Mont Ventoux towers above us in a blue sky, beautiful but brutal, and Jean-Pierre Meffre takes us through his gamme covering Sablet, Rasteau, Gigondas and Châteauneuf-du-Pape (where he owns less than a hectare that abuts the vineyards of Beaucastel). We taste a succession of vintages and its clear that the 2009's will have a freshness and elegance by comparison with their beefier 2007 siblings.
Heading north (on the home stretch now) we arrive at Domaine Biguet just outside Saint Péray, west of Valence. We’re an hour late for our tasting but Jean-Louis Thiers remains relaxed and promptly shows us in to his neat tasting room. Saint Péray is commonly recognised for its sparkling wines that historically out-priced Champagne, but the still version (also made from 100% Marsanne) deserves to be better known, with aromas of orchard fruit and a ripe, rich palate.
Our final tasting en route to Lyon airport is fittingly at Domaine Georges Vernay in Condrieu. Here we taste the range of 2009 Viogniers for which the estate is justifiably world-renowned, as well as red Côtes du Rhône (interestingly from vines within the AOC limits of Condrieu) and a sleek St Joseph from 35 year old vines. Paul Amsellem (Christine Vernay’s husband) is gamely hosting a large party of Norwegians, so winemaker Christine conducts our tasting and the conversation flows from yields and lieu-dits to the ‘dematerialisation’ of the music industry.
Alas, we have to flee as our return flight beckons, but it’s been one hell of a week!
Jason & Tom.
If the assembled wine-tasters from Baltimore-based asset management company, T Rowe Price, would rather have been in the park on the finest summer evening this year, they weren't letting on. Instead, shoe-horned into an upstairs room in this traditional City boozer, they proved to be a model audience and even threw in some tricky questions - what dictates the size of the bubbles in sparkling wine and is there a correlation with quality? No, was the answer to the latter when you are talking about bottle-fermented (although the cheapest method of sparkling production which involves pumping C02 through tanked wine will produce large bubbles which will rapidly dissipate). The Champagne Companion (Michael Edwards, Firefly Book 1999) notes that 'bubbles should be uniform in shape, lively, and flow in a persistent stream toward the surface of the wine; Experts differ about the ideal size of bubbles. Most Champenois say that the smaller the bubbles, the better the Champagne, but large bubbles are not necessarily the sign of an inferior wine - your palate is a better judge.' If any one out there can convincingly improve on this thesis, we'll send them a bottle of Yapp Champagne!
Highlights of the Rhone wine tasting (it was sparkling Saint Péray that attracted the effervescent debate) were Domaine Georges Vernay's rare, single-vineyard Condrieu Coteaux du Vernon 2007 (400 cases produced) which was tasted (perhaps unfairly) against the Ardèche co-operative's generic Viognier (eminently drinkable, but not in the same league) and Patrick Jasmin's Côte Rôtie 1999. This was Patrick's inaugural solo vintage (following the untimely death of his father, Robert the previous year) and it proved to be everything one might hope for in traditional (rather than single-vineyard, super charged) Côte-Rôtie wine - rustic-nosed, medium-bodied, supple, smoky and silky.
We departed into the balmy night and the discreet group never let on whether they managed the assets of a certain Baltimore-based wine critic.
