The Petit Verdot grape is best known for its role in Bordeaux, where it adds colour, fragrance and tannin to several top Médoc wines. On its own, it’s generally a bit too assertive, deep and rich, the sort of wine you sometimes wish would go away and learn to be a bit quieter. Or at least that’s what I used to think. The last few months have thrown up some examples to challenge this opinion, from places as far apart as Portugal (Azamor***), Chile (Von Siebenthal) and in this instance southern France, courtesy of the ever-reliable Domaine La Condamine L’Évêque. It has that violet-tinged PV perfume, and a refreshing, earthy core of blackcurrant where others have rather blobby, overripe berry flavours. Full of character, yet weighing in at a svelte 12.5% alcohol, it’s a good buy at £6.15 from Jeroboams.
*** The Azamor web link is here, but be warned, it’s one of those sites awash with totally unnecessary Flash animation. For anyone apart from web designers, Flash is a complete waste of time and effort, narcissistic and annoying in the extreme. French, Italian and Spanish sites tend to be the worse, but this site, complete with Cupid firing a corckscrew-tipped arrows, can compete in the why-do-they-bother stakes.
Simon I have to agree with you about Azamor – the wine itself is a joy, but the website is flaming useless. I could have cheerfully garrotted that cupid after several failed attempts to find some useful information on the site!
Cheers
Heather Dougherty
Maybe it’s time to start a ‘name and shame’ list of the worst flash sites Heather. http://www.champagne-devaux.fr is another one that has irked me recently.
Me again.
We’re hoping to accompany lunch tomorrow with a 240 quid bottle of rose dom perignon. At what temperature would this be best served?
Hope you and yours are well,
Simon
Don’t overchill it – only crap wines need lengthy periods in the fridge to make sure you can’t taste how bad they are. For something like this, you’ll lose a lot of the aroma if it’s too cold. So even from warm room temperature, 60 mins in the fridge should be max, and if it’s reasonably cool to start with, it’ll need less.