France part 7 - Rasteau and Vacqueyras

Sept. 24 Rasteau

Rasteau is not one of the picturesque towns like Gigondas or Sablet – old hill towns with scenic approaches and historic buildings. It is more like flat agricultural land with many new houses done with red roof tiles and pinkish adobe walls – more like Arizona than the usual expectation of France.

We visited perhaps the best producer there:

La Soumade

2009 Rose pleasant with lots of acidity.

2008 Cotes du Rhone – we wanted to pick up some cooking wine for a daube, but this turned out to be too good for that even at E 6.80. Nice rustic bouquet kots of stuffing.

2007 Rasteau Villages – dark with nice dark fruit and black olive nose, soft tannins in the mouth, tasty.

2007 Rasteau Villages Cuve Prestige – another nice nose with an added floral hint, but harder tannin.

This producer had a nice new winery building and a spotless stainless steel tank room.

With lunch:

Baron Fuente Grand Reserve Brut – a producer unknown to us. Slightly dull nose, so so mousse, decent flavours.

Dom. De la Pigeade Muscat Beaumes de Venise – no doubt the 2009, this was the off dry version rather than the sweeter one, and we had it specifically to mate with some bloc de foie gras on toast. Perfumed nose, slight warmth in the nose, medium sweet, great with the FG!

Vacqueyras – we’d been tasting lots of these wines from producers in neighbouring areas, but this was the first visit to the fountainhead, as it were.

Sang des Cailloux

For me, this is one of the premier producers in Vacqueyras, and sadly we don’t get their product in BC any more. Also probably the most expensive producer with prices around 20E.

2009 Un Sang des Cailloux blanc – a blend of Grenache blanc, bourbelenc, clairette, roussanne and viognier, this wine had a very nice fruity nose with the tropical element probably accountable to the viognier component detectable underneath a primary peach nose. Soft in the mouth, with slightly low acidity but very tasty right now. Interestingly priced at 1E above the red!

2008 Cuvee Ducinello - 70% Grenache, 20% Syrah, 7% Mourvèdre, 3% Cinsault. A very well made wine with mineral and fruit nose, good concentration in the mouth and good length with excellent acidity.

2008 Cuvee Lopy – even better with a nice meaty nose, a little mint and the ubiquitous garrigue, which is really a general term for the various spicy herbal notes one fionds in the fields around here – lavender, thyme, rosemary, mint, dill (we find lots of fennel growing wild at the side of the road, quite pungent when crushed). Good weight and good length. Nice wine.

Vignerons de Caractere

We had to drop into this producer – it is an ultra modern Disneyland sort of building with many wines, a restaurant, ultra modern interior décor….and few wines of merit. W tasted a few and then begged off as they were simple, on the sweet side and ultimately uninteresting. Good gift shop, mind you…..

Domaine Montvac

Unknown to me, but we hit them in the middle of harvest, with dogs running about, a washer dryer perched on top of the garage roof, and much activity, yet the winemaker attended us and gave a very nice tasting.

Cécile Dusserre let us run through her wines and explained in a mix of our so-so French and her rather better English, how she had made them and what she thought of them.

2008 Vacqueyras Arabesque – 70 grenache 25 syrah 5 mourvedre (this is really a Grenache based winery). Fragrant notes of vanilla and oak work really well as counterpoint to the fruit underneath. Medium weight, has time to go, very enjoyable.

2007 Arabesque – tasty wine with a conventional nose that was also quite tasty.

2006 Arabesque – closed nose but good flavours

2007 Variation – a small patch wine with elegant complex nose, well made, from 100% Grenache.

2007 Gigondas – rich, ripe nose, good colour, finely tuned tannins and good length. Very good.
We bought some of this and had it with dinner – bacon wrapped lotte (monkfish) on a bed of creamed leeks with local lobster halved and grilled.

We had the Gigondas with the lotte and this with the huge mud bugs:

2009 Dom. Viallet Apremont Vin de Savoie – nice green nose, lots of acidity, crisp and clean.

[Jenise]

One of the interesting bits about Soumade was the single picture on the wall of their bright and tourist-ready tasting room: the picture of the vigneron and his sons standing either side of a star visitor: Robert Mondavi. That guy got around!

That's a nice trip you are doing, Bill, through the Southern Rhône.

Did you learn anything about the plans for Rasteau to become a "village" in its own right like Gigondas and Vacqueyras. I heard rumours that the INAO wanted to outlaw Carignan in "Rasteau" which would embarrass Jérôme Bressy (Gourt de Mautens) who uses old vine Carignan in his highly priced CDRV Rasteau, about which I express reservations in another thread. I used to buy Soumade up to about 10 years ago when Roméro quarrelled about price with the Belgian importer from whom I buy most Rhône; I like them in a chunky style and still have one bottle of 1998 Confiance left.

Montvac is a producer whose wines I would like to meet since this board's Tony Fletcher wrote enthusiastically about them; I am particularly curious about their 100% Grenache cuvée. Domaine des Armouriers is a Vacqueyras producer whose wines I have greatly enjoyed.

Perhaps my favourite CDRV village is Cairanne. AFAIK there are no plans for them to branch out as an independent "village". I have great affection for Dom. Marcel Richaud, which I have visited twice, and Dom. Oratoire Saint-Martin, whose Alary brothers are regular visitors to Belgium. These two growers, IMHO, make wines at least the equal of any I have met from from the independent "villages" like Gigondas, Vacqueyras, Rasteau (soon), etc.

What is being said about the effects of the diluvian rains of about 2 weeks ago?

I totally concur with you on the Caracteres wines, but also can speak highly of their restaurant---it's quite innovative for a co-op, and the food is exceptionally good. The wines are merely okay though, I agree.

I was not as impressed as you with La Soumade, as I felt the wines were veering toward the spoofification side; very much a "new world" influence and ambition going on there. Interesting homage to some of the great spoofified wines of the world with the array of 'dead soldier' trophy bottles all over the tasting room...and as Jenise said, the big pic of Bob Mondavi dominating the room.

And Sang des Cailloux....ah yes, proof you CAN get blood out of a stone. And damned good blood at that.

[Jenise]

Tim, re the rain--you'd be surprised, but actually nothing is being said. Nobody appears concerned. When we first got here we asked a few times and got shrugs, along with assurances that the grapes were fine and picking would start three or four days hence after a warm mistral dried things up a bit. That's been it. Everyone seems optimistic.

What is clear is that the 09 vintage is stellar. Could be another 98. We've also found it interesting is how good the 07s we've been tasting have been: it's as if all the big spoofy Parker wines went to North America and the "unfit" ones that remained behind are the real gems of the vintage. We've also been continually impressed with the 08 Vacqueyras over the 08 Gigondas wines we've tried. The latter have mostly lacked body and complexity, where the V's seem to have everything right.


Hoke, didn't think of spoof when we tasted at Soumade--I am plagued with a sinus infection that makes my sense of smell come and go. It makes me hesitant to offer my opinions, and Bill and Coop and I are generally in agreement. Soumade was the first occasion on which we differed greatly--they both loved the wines and I didn't care for them. Too extracted, heavy and sweet for me. Makes me wonder if there was something beguiling in the nose that gave them more form than I, relying only on what I had on my tongue, could detect. Neither of them are new world kind of guys.