A Red From The Rhone

This may only be me, but does anyone else ever find that after friends have been round for dinner, there’s always an odd bottle of unopened wine that some one brought round and never got drunk. Well this bottle is one of those!

I knew absolutely nothing about this wine other than what information I could glean from the label, the obvious was then name. La Tour de Marrenon 2010 Reserve, Ventoux, and is a blend of Grenache and Syrah. On close examination of the back label, I found that it had been imported by one of our leading supermarket chains and produced by Marrenon!

AOC Ventoux is a region located in the south east area of the Rhone, where 80% of it’s reported production goes to reds blended from  Grenache, Syrah, Cinsault, Mourvèdre, and Carignan. With the whites coming from Clairette,Bourboulenc,Grenache Blanc, and Roussane, they also produce some Rose; the style is very much that of light and fruity, the minimum alcohol is 11%, this one came in at 13,5%.

In the glass it had a bright/youthful ruby colour, and quite pronounced aromas of blackcurrant, with black pepper coming through from them background. On the palate, again it had quite pronounced flavours of blackcurrant, with a touch of red currants thrown in to the mix, and then you got the peppery spice. It had quite a large amount of acidity with very little fine tannins, which didn’t really work for me.

Would I recommend this wine, it wasn’t really an inspiring wine, there was nothing wrong with it in itself, but it just didn’t set my taste buds alight, if I saw it on the shelf would I buy It, then the answer is no, but if someone did bring it around again I would drink it.