A Month in Provence - TonghamTaster’s French Wine Tasting Course – week 23

The 12 month on-line course to help you learn about French wines - Top tips on how to get value when buying them - Reasonably priced up-to-date recommendations of what to buy and try in the UK - Bringing you the best of Tongham Village Hall wine tastings.

INTRODUCTION
This week start our month in Provence. The well known rosés are our first port of call. Most of us must have tried them but how many of us know much about them? All of the Provence appellations make rosés but we will leave those of Bandol, Bellet, Cassis and Palette until the end of the month.

LOCALITY
Provence is in the South of France on the Mediterranean Coast. The wine area stretches from Nice in the east to Arles in the west. In the north it touches on to the Rhone Valley appellations. The region of course is very sunny with little rain but it does suffer from the famous Mistral wind.

VARIETALS
Perhaps once of the main reasons that few of us could name the grape varieties in a Provence rosé is that we don’t care – these are fun carefree wines, not serious wines for connoisseurs. The other reason is that they contain too many varietals to remember.
In the pink wines of Provence the main grapes are normally the common southern red grape varietals of Grenaches, Carignan, Cinsault, Syrah and Mouvedre. In some appellations you may also find Cabernet Sauvignon. However, there are many other permitted and used varietals, some relatively unknown outside the area and others imported from close by in Italy.

THE WINES

Just €3 in France and rather nice!

The largest appellation is that of Cotes de Provence. Over 75% of this appellation is the famous pink rosé wines. Much, but not all of it, is sold in the distinctive skittle shaped bottle. The wines vary from the relatively tasteless drink to be consumed without too much thought on a hot summer’s day to more serious rosés that some growers are now trying to produce. Colours also vary from a very pale pink hue to something much darker, sometimes with a copper colour. The style is normally dry.
Similar wines come from Coteaux d’Aix en Provence. The Coteaux de Pierrevert is one of the more inland appellations and its rosé tend to be very pale and light. Other AOC names you might see are Les Baux de Provence and Coteaux Varois.
These wines are for drinking young and very chilled.
Being made in the fashionable area of the South of France, and with the current exchange rate, these rosé wines do not often offer much value for money. I tend to buy mine in French supermarkets where you can still find something drinkable for three Euros whereas in the UK you will pay over six Pounds.

THE TASTE
Most of the wines are dry and gentle with a perfumed nose and just enough fruity taste to make them worth drinking. The fruity tastes are often of strawberry.

TOP TIPS
• Buy these wines during a trip to France rather than in the UK. On wines of this price the duty makes a big difference and the French are less willing to pay a big price for ordinary wines like this.

Not very good value at well over £6

HOMEWORK
For your homework this week buy and try one of this week’s Provence rosé wines, which may include one of the following:
.
Majestic -Château Saint Roch-les-Vignes 2009/2010 Côtes de Provence – about £7
Waitrose - Château de Fontlade, Aurelia Primae Rosé 2009 Coteaux Varois en Provence – about £8.
Waitrose - Esprit de Buganay Rosé 2010 Côtes de Provence – about £9
Majestic- Château Pigoudet 'La Chapelle' Rosé 2010 Coteaux d'Aix-en-Provence – about £9

FOOD PAIRINGS

These wines go well with the garlic and olive oil cuisine of Provence. They are also good with much seafood and fish dishes – why not try with a Bouillabaisse. Finally, these are wines just for quaffing on their own or at a BBQ.

COMING SOON
Next week we cover the surprisingly good but less well known red wines of Provence. If you missed the early weeks of this course, it is not too late to catch up. Just click on the French Wine Course link at the top of this page.

Report on December Get-Together

For our December 2010 event the wines were chosen by Sheila and she took much care presenting them in the perfect flight order. Her wine choices were influenced by the time she has spent in the USA where she had first tasted Gewürztraminer and gained a love for Zinfandel. The wines were all from Sainsburys and most had been purchased when at a discount which allowed us another very reasonably priced evening of under £7 including food. Sheila’s wines consisted of a number of Sainsbury’s excellent Taste the Difference range plus some big brand names; proving once again that we are not wine snobs at Tongham Tasters. John tried to be seasonal with the food and served some turkey and chestnut soup, some Marks and Spencer’s party food and the usual raw carrot and cucumber palate cleansers. Jane also made some lovely home made oatmeal bread. The Pork Belly Squares from M&S were very good – recommended. This month we welcomed John S for the first time, who joined our usual hardcore winos for an excellent evening.


As usual we tasted everything blind so we would not be influenced by knowing what the wine was. This induced the usual fun guess the grape variety game and this time we did quite well. Scores below are quoted for each wine in the order – John E, Ian, Steve, John S, Clive, Sheila & then Jane.

1. St Hallett Barossa 2008 Gamekeeper’s Reserve Australia - £8.49 but £6.37 after discount.

Four of our tasting team had this as their top wine of the evening and two of the remaining three had it as their runner-up. It was the last wine of the evening and shone like a star for some of us after the two big brands that preceded it. This is definitely a wine worth picking up when the supermarkets are having their 25% off deals. John reckoned it was the best red we had tasted in the last 3 months and enjoyed its petrol nose (trust an Alfa Romeo driver to want a wine to smell of petrol!). This by the way is a blend of Shiraz, Grenache and Touriga – some of us guessed the first two parts of the blend but didn’t get the hints of the Portuguese grape variety. Scores on the doors were 16, 16.5,17,18,15,18,17 with not everyone giving their gold, silver and bonze medals using th same criteria.

2. Conegliano Prosecco Superiore Brut 2009 Sainsbury’s Taste the Difference Italy - £9.99 but £6.99 after discount.
Sheila thought we ought to have a sparkling wine as it was approaching Christmas – and we all thought she had chosen well. Two of the team had it as their wine of the evening and a further four in their top three. It had lovely gentle small bubbles and was very dry but floral. Impressions ranged from Ian’s lemon and sherbet to Clive’s clotted cream, and Jane’s elderflower. A very nice bottle of under £10 bubbly. Scores out of 20 were 14.5, 11.5,15+,16, 13.5, 19, 14.

3. Alsace Gewürztraminer 2008 Cave de Turckheim Sainsbury’s Taste the Difference France - £6.99
This was Jane’s favourite wine of the evening and another four of us had it in their top three. It proved to be a fantastic food wine and went excellently both with the turkey and chestnut Soup and the belly pork. Ian identified this as a gewürztraminer straight away and described it as tasting of light marmalade. The two Johns thought the aroma was either of tropical fruits or of their wife’s perfume. For Clive it grew on him after a while and he nearly finished off the bottle! A good budget choice to have with your turkey at Christmas, this comes from a good Alsace cooperative. Scores were 12, 15.5, 15-, 15, 12.5, 19, 18.

4. Turning Leaf Zinfandel California 2009 USA- £7.24 but £5.43 after discount.
Four of the group had this as their bronze medal winner. For John it was too sweet but others enjoyed its spicy Christmas pudding or cherry bubblegum taste. Zinfandel is not a grape we drink a lot of in the UK so it was an interesting choice for the group to try whilst Sheila’s USA recollections prompted a whole host of alligator and crocodile stories and then we went on to hippopotami! Scores were 11.5, 14.5, 13.5, 13+, 16, 14, 20, 11.

5. Jacob’s Creek Reserve Shiraz 2007 Australia - £8.99 but £6.74 after discount.
This well known brand didn’t do very well despite being one of the evening’s more expensive wines. Although, obviously Shiraz it was rather too bland for most of us men. Interestingly it proved to be a wine that appealed more to the women. Scores were 10, 11, 13-, 15, 11, 18, 18.

6. Cotes de Provence Rosé 2009 Sainsbury’s Taste the Difference France - £6.00 but £4.50 after discount.
This was a very dry rosé but it lacked the wow factor to get into anyone’s top three. Clive thought this was another wine that smelt of bubblegum. It was the cheapest wine of the evening and if you like a dry innocuous rose it could be for you. Scores were 10, 10, 12, 14, 14, 17, 11.5.



Gradually the evening became a blur!

 Interestingly enough, we have had a rosé, a white and now a red become our wine of the evening. We have also proved that our favourite wines are not necessarily the most expensive. Nobody has yet produced six wines that were high-scoring – this is a difficult challenge to buy 6 good wines for £50 and make sure that they don’t clash and then serve them in the right order – but all of our 3 challengers in 2010 have given us an enjoyable evening. So far our female participants have been keen to show their bargain hunting expertise whilst Ian spent right up to the limit – will this be another trend as we go into 2011?

Our next monthly tasting is being hosted by Steve and Hazel on January 13th. The February tasting, where Clive will be buying the wines, has had its date moved to February 17th. Steve has agreed to choose the wines for our March 10th event. We look forward to all of these evenings and as usual you will be made most welcome if you want to join us – just email us at Tonghamtaster@gmail.com.

Thanks to everyone for bringing their own glasses. If you are thinking of coming but are put off by the idea of buying 6 wines glasses, note that ASDA are currently doing 6 reasonable wine glasses for £3 and Wilkinsons do glasses at about 22 pence each. Apparently Steve reckons the very best deal around is 20 pence but I’ve forgotten where that was.