Another wine geek and I, accompanied by our spouses...spice...? decided to have dinner out now that such things are possible again and I thought that a rather unusual wine choice could be fun – St. Peray.
We both love Northern Rhones but the whites, aside from Hermitage, get little attention. In fact looking at RPs book on the Rhone (Wines of the Rhone River), published in 1997, the St. Peray area is called “the Jurassic Park of the Rhone” and he stated that the wines made there came in only two types – dull still wine and dull sparkling wine! He went on to say that the dull low acid wines had no future and that the vines should be ripped out and syrah planted!
The two wines we chose to compare were the 2016 Paul Jaboulet Aîné St. Péray Les Sauvagères and the 2018 Domaine Auguste Clape St. Péray Blanc.
Jaboulet – the two wines were surprisingly close to the same upbringing. This one was 80% Roussanne and 20% Marsanne, and 55% of it saw oak (5% of which was new oak), 25% went into concrete ‘eggs’, and the remaining 20% went into stainless steel. There was no battonage and no malolactic fermentation. The wine was light in colour, had a light but lovely nose that featured some floral elements and wet mineral. On palate we got a very clean apple/pear fruit, well balanced and with medium length, quite dry.
Clape – not surprisingly this was the more expensive wine This wine was also 80/20 Roussanne/Marsanne, and 1/3 of it went into oak, 13 into cement and 1/3 into steel. It showed a little darker and with less citrus in the nose, in fact the nose was over all heavier, and on palate it also seemed heavier. Good length. Creamy presentation. A generally bigger wine.
Both were as expected quite similar but the Jaboulet was lighter on its feet and more elegant and was the one we both ended up preferring, although the Clape was very respectable as well.