September Food and Wine in Provence
Diary of Giles MacDonough
It has been a crazy summer. After a scorching June in Britain, we had a cold July and August which picked up a bit at the end. The heat reappeared in September, climbing up again to a dizzy 35C in London. It is rare to see proper summer weather in September here but there was lots of record-breaking warmth this year, and it is not over yet. I am writing on 3 October and the BBC is telling me to expect sun well into next week, with the thermometer meant to touch 26C on Sunday.
Every now and then I go outside to look at that apology for a vine at the back of my house which climbs a forty-foot bay tree and gives me a few bunches of dull, sour grapes every autumn. I generally leave them hanging for the starlings. If the birds spare me a small portion, I make a thin wine which I then turn into vinegar. They do not generally ripen well. This year they flowered during the hot dry spell in June and many of them are now blue-black. They still have no redeeming flavour, but maybe next Wednesday I will make a few bottles of vinegar before the weather is set to break on the 11th.
Good news for Britain maybe, with proper levels of ripeness for the nobler grapes like Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, rather than making do with Bacchus or Madeleine Angevine-based wines for a change; but 2023 has not necessarily been great for wines in Mainland Europe, where heat waves have been tempered by floods (heat and rain brings rot) and drought conditions the rest of the time have meant low yields and unequal ripening. The general conclusion is: despite such good weather at the end of the growing season, only the best winemakers will make good wines, that is those who made a stringent selection prior to fermenting their grapes.
I was once again at the Domaine des Anges in the Ventoux region of northern Provence in the middle of September. For much of the time the temperature was well into the thirties. The winemaker, Florent Chave had got most of the grapes in before we arrived, but he had left some Grenache and Syrah hanging because the berries were still small. It was a gamble as he knew there was heavy rain coming, but once that cleared up the hot sun returned and I imagine Florent was able to bring in his last grapes at his own speed, this time swollen with a little much-needed moisture from the mid-September downpours. Last weekend it was still 35 or 36C in parts of the south of France, but I doubt there were many stragglers who had had anything left to pick.
From a personal put of view it was wonderful to be on the mainland again. We assembled at the restaurant La Bergerie at the bottom of the hill that leads to the little pilgrimage chapel of Notre Dame des Anges. The weather on the 12th was mixed, and some drops of rain fell. The next morning we were shopping in Carpentras when the heavens opened unleashing a huge deluge that forced us to take shelter in the excellent fruit and vegetable shop by the war memorial. When we got back, however, we found that the Domaine des Anges had been spared and hardly received a drop.
One of our regulars had raided his cellar to bring us a tasting of 2001 Reserva and Gran Reserva Riojas as a prelude to grand curry dinner, cooked to celebrate his eightieth birthday. The wines to be tasted were Culmen Reserva from Bodegas LAN, Contino Reserva from CVNE, Castillo Ygay Gran Reserva, Muga Prado Enea Gran Reserva, Muga Seleccion Especial and Viña Ardanza Reserva Especial. There were also the following wines: 1994 Viña Real Reserva fron CVNE, the 1998 Prado Enea and the 2011 CVNE Reserva. There was also a very nicely preserved 1999 Archange from the Domaine des Anges itself.
The wines were all good, but those which showed least well were the 2011 CVNE Reserva which was a little short and not destined for a glorious future, the 1994 Viña Real and the 2001 Contino Reserva, which were just beginning to show their respective ages. Good were the Castillo Ygay with its dominant liquorice note and the Viña Ardanza which smelled of mushroom soup but had a glorious structure. The very best was the Culmen (in magnum) which seemed the most lively and youthful with its aromas of sealing wax and incense, the 2001 Prado Enea with its gaminess and tremendous power, and the 1998 Prado Enea which was a cupful of rich black fruits tempered by cooling acidity. The man of the match, however, was the Muga Seleccion Especial: wax, mushrooms, blackberries, violets with a touch of sweetness, great acidity and huge length – what a birthday treat!
After the tasting there was much discussion about the origins of these fine old Rioja wines. Rioja derived celebrity from the Phylloxera epidemic in the second half of the nineteenth century. The aphis destroyed almost all of Europe’s vines, which had to be replanted on resistant roots. As Rioja didn’t catch the disease until later, Spanish wines were taken to Bordeaux to be passed off as claret. In Haro you can still see the many old railway lines which trundled towards France laden with wine. Once Bordeaux recovered, Rioja had already gained the reputation of being the stateliest wine in Spain. As Hugh Johnson says, Rioja is Spain’s ‘Bordeaux and Burgundy’. I remember in the eighties you found Gran Reservas at almost any roadside inn, some of which dated back to the twenties. They were often very good and dirt cheap too. Sadly, those days are long gone.
From a wine point of view, that was the highlight of my brief trip. The next day we dodged the sun under the ancient plain trees of St Didier and in the evening supped on blanquette de veau at the Domaine des Anges. There was a lunch at a favourite restaurant, Les Remparts in the pretty little town of Venasque. The sun was still up, but the tourists had long since gone home. Some business in Avignon meant I missed the Friday market in Carpentras and went to Pernes on Saturday morning instead. Carpentras is a working market but Pernes has become more and more touristy. Only about a third of the stallholders were there but at least I secured some good local honey.
It seems those who had grown-up children had opted for a late holiday and like us, they too were enjoying the last rays of the sun.
Ends
