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.

En Primeur – An Introduction

En primeur roughly translates from the French as “first refusal” or “in early produce.”
In its pure form the method originated two centuries ago, when merchants selected barrels of wine which they would then bottle themselves. Today the bottling process has been taken over by the châteaux. Despite the changes, the principle remains the same, allowing producers to benefit greatly from the advance payment for their wine.

In its simplest terms en primeur is the practice of selling wine before it is ready for release, before it has even been bottled. These are unfinished wines, which are only half way through the maturation process. It will be months, even years, before these wines are ready for the bottling process, after which they will still require further maturation before they become approachable.

The method is traditionally practiced by the wines of outstanding quality from Bordeaux, Burgundy and The Rhone valley. Other regions such as Italy, California and Australia have recently begun to partake in this practice on an extremely limited scale.

En primeur purchasers fall in to two distinct categories: Wine lovers, who are unfazed by the prospect of waiting years before they can taste the final product; or investors, whose aim is to make a financial profit from leaving the wine to mature. The latter are the most predominant buyers.

The en primeur process is a complicated one, in which people purchase wines on others recommendation. Often, they will not have even tasted the wine for themselves, and are led simply by the profile and recommendation of wine commentators within the industry, such as Robert Parker, Clive Coates and James Suckling.

Barrel tasting for Bordeaux en primeur wines occur the spring after the harvest, which equates to a maturation of around six to eight months, leaving the raw wine still highly tannic and undeveloped. Tasting for en primeur wines of Burgundy and The Rhone regions occur another six months after that, leaving them in a similar condition to that of Bordeaux. The tasting allows producers of the wine to understand how the market will react, by the feedback of the wine connoisseurs. It also gives the negociants a chance to see how the finished article will develop, giving them an idea of the quality of the wine. This in turn allows them to determine the eventual price.