August Food and Wine: deepest, darkest France
Written by Giles MacDonogh
Nothing became August like the leaving it. Before the month drew to its dismal close, we reassembled in Frankfurt and made a long overdue visit to Mainz. The trip was not about food or wine, but naturally that came into it, as did the sun, lashings of sun, between 32 and 34
degrees of it, that caused a great many grumbles and some frayed nerves among us Hyperboreans. Now we’re all back in the cold, wondering where the summer went even before the season officially comes to an end.
We exhausted ourselves with walking in the heat, and the evenings took in Nuraghe, the decent Sardinian near my daughter’s flat; a Chinese place in a swanky part of town that I promised not to reveal (no, not even for A$100) which served some of the best Chinese food I have ever eaten, the jolly Apfelwein Wagner in Sachsenhausen (next time maybe Zum gemalten Haus next door) with its inevitable pork knuckles; and in Mainz the very friendly Stadthaus Schänke where a charming hostess and her son were offering lots of seasonal dishes with chanterelles.
Mainz itself was inevitably a mixed blessing. The terrible bombing of 27 February 1945 destroyed pretty well all the timber buildings, but some of the solid stone edifices survived, including the Romanesque Cathedral, which miraculously lost only its wooden roof. Astonishing is St Peter’s rococo church which I could have sworn had escaped its share of the 1,500 tons of TNT, but no: it was burned out, and all those amazing gilded details and trompe l’oeil were redone after the war.
There was a brief pitstop in London before I went on to Provence, but where Frankfurt had been almost unbearably hot, Provence got progressively colder and more blustery as the mistral blew in, wrenching the roots of your hair and driving you rapidly to shelter. There is nothing new about the mistral, as a friend pointed out, but it appears that with climate change famous winds like the mistral, sirocco, tramontane and föhn have become denatured, blow for longer and in different directions.
There had been a storm with heavy rainfall at the start of September, which is not unusual either, and the virtue of the mistral is that it dries everything out, but it still doesn’t look like being an early vintage. It has been a rotten year in many parts of France. Bits of the Languedoc were looking at a 70 percent drop resulting from hail, and mildew has blighted other regions. My friend’s estate had been mercifully spared.
They just need a couple of dry and sunny weeks to finish off the ripening: dränge sie zur Vollendung hin und jage die letzte Süße in den schweren Wein.Rilke (Push the grapes to perfect ripeness and chase the last drops of sweetness into the rich wine)
My friend is about five minutes from Mazan, a village that has become infamous in the last few weeks. This is ‘la France profonde’ where anything can and does happen. As I write, the Pelicot case is raging in Avignon :a former electrician in his seventies who had invited scores of men round to rape his drugged and comatose wife, of more or less the same age, while he filmed them.
The story is both macabre and grotesque and hard to credit in a quiet, pretty little place like Mazan, but sadlythese things do happen behind net curtains in the French provinces. The only thing that occurs to me which might have made a difference in Mazan is its recent expansion, both east and west along the D942 and previously across the little River Auzon along the road to Pernes near the U-Express supermarket.
Somebody told me the Pelicots lived there near the U, retired folk from Paris. He was anxious to find fellow ‘swingers’ in his new home. He found a website where local swingers congregated, but Gisèle said she was not up for it.
“I have probably rubbed trollies with them in the past few years, as I often go to the U to get supplies. Besides the U, I know the two good bakers, the two good bars. One, Le Siècle, used to be run by a charming, worldly young man who had spent a year studying in Dublin and played rugby for one of the university teams, but he had a tragic accident racing his motorbike and has since moved away.”
Domaine des Anges – looking towards Gigondas and the Dentelles de Montmirail.
In L’Ardoise, Mazan even has a good restaurant for a change. I have probably spoken to some of the fifty men on trial too. I note that around twenty have so far evaded justice but I bet many people in the village know perfectly well who some of them are. Others must have come from further away.
“Just wait till the newshounds learn that the best hotel in the village, the Château de Mazan, was originally called the ‘Château de Sade’ The de Sade family were formerly lords of the manor in Mazan.”
Our stay in the region was little affected by the trial in Avignon. We cooked a bit, and we went out to some good little places like Le Petit Comptoir and Le Grillonin Bédoin, Le Café de la Place in Pernes and l’Ardoise inMazan and we had a vertical tasting of l’Archange, one of the top wines at the Domaine des Anges.
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Vinification and Tasting notes from the wineries website www.domainedesanges.com
Archange red:
This is a wine for special occasions, for a rare sirloin steak or a birthday baron of beef.
Assemblage
90% Syrah and 10% Grenache.
Handpicked in late September and early October, in a great vintage. The grapes were crushed and destemmed before being fermented. The Syrah was fermented between 26°C and 28°C for ten days with a delestage every day. The Grenache was fermented in an open tank with regular punch downs during the fermentation period. Further maceration was conducted for four weeks to facilitate the full extraction and softening of the tannins. After pressing 75% of the Syrah was placed into traditional Burgundy oak barrels (228l), between two and five years old, and 25% into a Terra Cotta Amphora (800l) for malo-lactic fermentation, and matured for twelve months. The Grenache meanwhile was aged in stainless steel tank to preserve its rich fruit flavours. The wine was then blended and very lightly filtered before bottling.
Alcohol content is 15.5%
370 cases of twelve bottles 90 magnums
Colour: Deep red with violet edges.
Nose: Rich aromas of spices, black cherries, violet and touches of liquorice.
Palate: Intense flavours of ripe black fruits with a rich, smooth tannin structure which provides a beautiful final of smoky and chocolate notes.
Cellaring: Can be drunk now with decanting or kept for up to ten years at least to experience the progress of its full development.
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Tasting
L’Archange has been around for over twenty years, but in the past ten or fifteen it has improved beyond all measure, as the percentage of Syrah increased (it now has the very smallest amount of Grenache permitted under the laws of the appellation) and the maturation has changed from small oak barrels to terracotta amphorae.
The first wines on the table were made by the Dubliner Ciaron Roony, but for over a decade Florent Chave has been at the helm. In my opinion they have got better and better, particularly since they have been aged in amphorae. The 2019 was the most opulent of all. The nose is hugely seductive and there are notes of tobacco and herbs (what the locals call ‘garrigue’), but it is not really ready to drink yet. The 2018 fell in with one sort of Archange, there was something meaty on the nose, perhaps a little smell of foie gras (I know, I know), and a more pronounced acidity, but it was not nearly so rich. The 2017 was possibly my favourite. There was game here on the nose, lots of black and red fruits, tobacco and herbs.
Many people preferred the 2016, which had a touch of liquorice on the nose and was a bit more cherry than the usual blackcurrant/blackberry. It was carrying a lot of alcohol, but these wines are usually 15 plus. It was also the last of the all-oak wines. The foie gras nose returned
on the 2015. The tannins were fine and cooling and there was still plenty of black fruit. The alcohol was nearer 16, however.
We had a duff bottle of 2014, but the second one was lovely. There was a little whiff of violets which made it seem closer to the 2017. It might not have been the longest? It was still gorgeous for all that. From 2013, the wines seemed more tired: that year there was a small scent of lychees, but the wine was drying out. The 2012 had had its alcohol reduced. We tried the original which we all liked much more. In the hot south you have to live with alcohol, or so it seems.
The 2011 was much more oaky: foie gras, brown sugar, vanilla, but short-ish. The 2010 was tasting old but the 2006 was still relatively perky, with plenty of fruit, which was also true of the 2005, even if the balance was not so great, a bit like an English summer?
Ends
Written by Giles MacDonogh
