Domaine Les Ondines, Vacqueyras, Passion Blanc, 2020, Rhone, France
This Rhone white wine from Domaine Les Ondines is rather good. With medium body and long length you taste the components that the 4 grape varieties add – Grenache blanc at 35%, Clairette at 35%, Roussanne at 20% and Bourboulenc at 10%. Theres citrus and melon with a hint of eucalyptus. It’s a grown up wine to be tasted rather than guzzled.
At £15 a bootle it’s pretty decent value too. Pair with a fish dish or roast chicken.
Paul Jaboulet Aîné, Syrah, 2021, Rhone, France
This syrah from Paul Jaboulet Aîné, in the Rhone of France is a marmite wine, its love it or hate it red wine when its first opened. Its dry, medium bodied and very juicy with rich aromas and flavours of blackcurrant and hints of spice but with a tanker full of herbs thrown in. When I tried it the next day much of the overpowering herb flavours had disapated. It’s not bad with all the herby nores but not what I was expecting, but it is also more juice focused and one dimensional. Even at £6.99 at Majestic Wines on a mixed 6 offer i couldn’t give it more points, sorry not for me.
Rhonea, Notre Dame des Vignes, Visan, 2020, Rhone, France
This is a typical Rhone style red wine made with the Grenache and Syrah grapes. It has depth and length, its dry with good balance acidity and lots of black fruit flavours with hints of Violet and the smackering of pepper. At £10 a bottle is excellent value
Saint Péray, Grain de Silex, 2015, Rhone, France
I do like a Rhône valley white but this one from Saint Peray has passed its best though, which is a shame because you can still taste what was.
You get hints of ripe citrus, grapefruit with honey on the nose and with flavours that follow on with peach, almond, melon with buttery notes and a grown up feel. It’s a very acidic wine dry but with good body and I suspect if I had drank this after 2 or 3 years from bottling it would have been a really excellent wine. So lesson learnt, don’t save what you think is great wine too long.
From one of the most respected Rhone families and before the winery became part of Skalli Family Wines, this is 34 years old french perfection. Well it was 34 years old before we drank it. Was is perfect in today’s world of wine?
Its 34 years old and wine at this age is not like the stuff you get in the supermarket or wine merchant. It needs to wake up, to open up and to be slipped, not gulped. The last bit was a challenge to me! There’s delicate aroma’s of redcurrant, oak and light spice notes. These follow in the taste, but you smell and taste these once its been left opened for about an hour, esp the spice notes. Tannins, what tannins. Silky smooth hints are found but I felt joy when sipping this wine. I don’t like heavy tanniny wines, this is such delight to drink.
This probably should have been drunk a bit earlier but its held up very, very well and I think every wine drinker should have the chance to taste older wines and appreciate the changes they go through and what a powerful wine turns into.
These older wines are not cheap and the cheaper Chateauneuf du Pape wines don’t really age well, spend £30+ on a younger wine and leave it somewhere cool and dark for 15 or 20 years to do its thing, in our case, a wine merchant to a wine fridge.
Henry Bouachon, Chateauneuf du Pape 1985, France