Category: Mourvèdre, Mataro and blends

2004 Domaine de l’Oratoire St Martin Cairanne Réserve des Seigneurs

Another old bottle from a favourite Rhône producer. One of those gambles at auction, the older the wine the more the risk? Bacchus smiled on my willingness to waste $30 dollars or so and the cork came out in one piece with barely a stain. Lovely smells of old cherry liqueur and a well cared for old house, polished furniture and a recently used sooty brick fireplace. Sweet and healthy garden soil, a touch of dark chocolate and very ripe strawberries maybe. Firm skin tannin and acidity softened by balsamic alcohol warmth. Gentle decay with age which may be the best we can hope for? There’s a feel of just fading lush sweetness and softness that brings to mind Priorat perhaps. A glimpse of Rhône history as I think the Alary brothers who produced such great value over the years have retired without family willing to take over their labours. Their twenty hectares are now owned by Château Mont Redon of CNdP. Things change.

14% alcohol. Cork. $32 at auction, just in time.

93 points.

2021 Yangarra GSM

A favourite McLaren Vale winery that makes consistently measured and delicious wine. Earlier vintages could be a bit rustic but things are increasingly clean and beautifully made.The label now puts the Blewitt Springs sub region front and proud, good idea as Grenache does seem to like it in those sandy soils. The back label is full of useful info for the wine interested, 53% Grenache, 33% Shiraz and 14% Mourvèdre together with soil type and method. This vintage just bursts out of the glass and all over the olfactory bits. 2021 looks so good in a lot of places. Starts with sweet nut paste, red fruit, fine chocolate and earth. Fresh and crisp, especially for McLaren Vale. With time and air the fruit gets denser and sweetly weighty. Some musky exotic perfume almost into lavender overlays that intense sugar dusted raspberry fruit. Could be cloyingly fruit sweet for some but it shows genuine unconfected fruit richness that’s cut and balanced by natural feeling grape skin tannin and juicy acidity. Must admit to some uncertainty as to how it’ll develop with time. Will the fruit calm or get too jammy? Only one way to find out, buy another and wait. Thanks to a kind friend in the business, there’s advantage to be taken from a staff and friends online buying site that makes the experimental outlay less foreboding, cheers.

14% alcohol. Screw cap. $35 RRP but worth shopping around.

92 to 94 points depending on ideas about fruit sweetness and time?

2019 Château d’Anglès La Clape Classique

Yet another of the Dan’s direct imports. 40% Syrah, 40% Grenache and 20% Mourvèdre. The 2018 was so good, I’ve had three bottles. Keenly interested to see what a new vintage brings. Again, spotlessly clean. Big waft of woody herbs, garrigue, spice, very dark berries and good for you prunes. Same in the sipping with some blackberry jam. Very ripe, dry skin flavours all polished and contained in a brusque sweep of astringently drying acidity and furry dry grape skin tannin. The tannins maybe suggest a bit of woody stem or oak tannin, hard to tell. If the 2018 had the lithe and svelte perfume of Syrah from the north end of the Rhône, this vintage looks solidly Mediterranean, warm and spiced. Chunky in fruit, trimmed in the making, rough with the smooth. Good value again.

14% alcohol. Diam. $20.90.

91 maybe 92 points and worth another if it becomes a Dan’s member’s’ special.

2016 Caillard Mataro

Mataro, sounds so good spoken with Australian vowels, a lot better than my horrible attempts at a Clouseau like Mourvèdre. Lovely to see a MW using the local name for his own wine and what an interesting drink it be. Sweet meaty roasting pan juices, sort of soy sauce savour, squishy over ripe blackberries and plums, spices, saltbush, tar and that Barossa coal dusty earth flavour. The structure holds the brooding dark with a fog of rich tannin and perky acidity, all well mixed. There’s a chiaroscuro, lovely word, lightness of sweet floral smells to brighten the twilight of the darkening fruit. You can see why Mataro so often brings an anchor of bass notes to the sweet charm of Grenache and Shiraz. I thought I did well to get my bottle at auction for $30, only to find a six pack for $22 a bottle available on the Caillards’ website. Quite a bargain for such a labour of love. The label artwork completes the package.

13.6% alcohol. Screw cap. $29.50 at auction.

93 points.

2015 Domaine Brusset Les Travers Cairanne

A GSM with a bit of C for Cinsault and from a favourite recent vintage. Unlike a less than sanitary 2012 version the invitation to sniff and drink here is clean and full of summer berries, dark chocolate with a cloud of Rhone violets and smoke. Deepens in the glass but never teeters into over ripeness. Blueberries, particularly their chewy skins and deep cherry liqueur emerge, touched with those old Mediterranean woody herbs. The shape is pushing the heroic with fresh acidity despite the ripeness and solid velvet tannin. Good enough to be confused with a good CNdP with a good rocky crunch. Very satisfying notwithstanding the last mouthful of sediment and bits. Teach me to drain the glass without looking.

13.5% alcohol. Cork. $32 at auction, sad there was only one bottle.

94 points,

2017 Domaine Bordes Les Narys Saint Chinian

A small organic producer practicing biodynamic agriculture. Looks pretty hipster, low sulphur yeasty when first opened with that distinctive aroma that Alice Feiring wonderfully described as puppy breath. A blend it seems of 30% Syrah, 30% Grenache with the rest split evenly between Mourvèdre and Carignan, it’s the Syrah that shines bright as it settled down the second day. Just medium weight, pure smoky, flowery, red berried and herby with a squeeze of blood orange over a bass of earth and roast juices. Energetic mouthwatering acidity and just a brush of powdery tannin finish it off with aplomb. Thought it too wild and volatile the first day only to be smitten the second. If you can’t hit a natural cave à manger for a carafe and plate for the moment, stay home with this.

14% alcohol. Cork. $32.50 at auction.

92 points but a bonus for a delicious, natural and edgy drink.

2020 The Story Super G Grampians Grenache Shiraz Mourvèdre

Another from the super value six pack from Rory and his Story. It’s not breaking news to say it was apparent to grape farmers a long time ago that something was awry with the weather as their crop was on average ripening a bit earlier each year. I’ve heard candid comment about the sustainability of getting Shiraz flavour ripe in its most revered old vineyards from those who earn their living there each and every year. Happily for some there’s always been Grenache and Mourvèdre planted to thrive in those once were infrequent very hot years. The Grampians used to struggle to ripen Shiraz some years, now there’s interest in varieties that cope with the heat and need less water in an area where it’s always been less than abundant. Super G to the rescue perhaps? Early days but this may be the future. Medium weight, bright as a ruby in the sun, fragrant smack in the chops of roses, Turkish Delight, cherries, plums, spice, meat juices and earth. Just bottled primary fruit sweetness cut by stem sap and savour. Good gloss of fruit, a blend more than the sum of its parts perhaps? I like, super good.

13.5% alcohol, seems a recurring story. Screw cap. Part of the six for $150.

92 points.

2015 Domaine du Cayron Gigondas

An old favourite from the 1990s and rarely sighted in recent years. When a single and lonely bottle appeared on that desperately addictive auction website, well, budget be damned, here we go. Luckily, the label’s not as sought after as some and it came in under my bravest bid and normal retail. Initial impressions were good, nice new smart label, great vintage and sealed with a Diam. First sniff was off putting, horrible stink of sulphide and maybe some of the dreaded B word? Only thing to do was to stuff the better than a cork closure back in, put it in the fridge for twenty four hours and hope. The next day and all’s well. Now clean and sprightly smells of vibrant red fruit, a touch of balsamic lift, an attractive sweet herby spike, chocolate and plums add dimension. Profound and resonant in the mouth with a great depth of bright fresh fruit, a tar and earth richness and a tug of garrigue, a warming sense of place. Finally a firm but softly ripe flood of tannin and life extending acidity, the wine’s not mine, although it’s good to hope. Must say there’s an extraordinary freshness and no sense of tired old browning Grenache to prevent this staying a long and delicious course. Maybe it’s the unusual 15% Cinsault giving acidity helped by 14% Syrah which did so well in 2015 and the 1% Mourvèdre, a tiny bit going a long way? The 70% Grenache tastes extremely good though. Sad it was just a singleton.

14% alcohol. Diam. $65.

95 points but definitely not on opening.

2005 Domaine de l’Oratoire de Saint Martin Cairanne Haut Coustias

The domaine’s top of the range label, still at retail for less than most CNdPs, is normally a blend of 60% old vine Mourvèdre with equal parts Grenache and Syrah making up the rest. It’s always with some trepidation that I risk a bid at auction for something well past its tenth birthday but here’s a well cared for bottle. No ullage, good cork of some length, always a relative term, no leakage and no taint, phew. Starts off with those dusty old bottle of wine smells, no surprise, swirl and air, then gloriously clean plumes of old leather couches, sweet kirsch cherries, blackberries, garrigue and spice, all deep, warming and rich. The fruit power and sweetness backed by an umami glycerol blanket of game meat pan juices, all those caramelised delicious bits. An earthy bass line of clay soil broken up with chalky stones, really. Remarkably all that richness is cooled by perfect fine pixel acidity and the ripest sweet tannins. The label may not be cutting edge fashion but this is great natural wine, biodynamic, no additions apart from some sulphur, I think and so clean and pure. A smile on the face of old Bacchus and me too.

14.5% alcohol. Cork. $33.80 bid.

95 points.

2017 Enrique Mendoza La Tremenda Alicante Monastrell

Mataro by another name would still be Mourvèdre. From the dry hinterland behind the horror of the Costa Blanca comes a suave, clean version of the grape that’s doesn’t mind a bit of sunshine itself. Dark cherries, honey biscuits and sort of maple syrup without the sweetness of course. Under the gentle extraction lurks a little of that Spanish iron ruggedness. Upon the second day, there’s more heft. Dark dried fruit, soot and dry scrub, sweetened by cherry, liquorice and new leather. Tannins and acid well judged for somewhere so apparently dry and hot, no bull in the ceramic outlet. Bit of a sexy beast really, innit.

14% alcohol. Diam. Bargain as part of the wholesaler’s clearance.

Started 90 ended 92 points.