A top-flight Grapillon d’Or
This suave Gigondas is an excellent winter wine, says Matthew Jukes.
2010 Gigondas, Domaine du Grapillon d'Or, Southern Rhne, France (£18.99, Waitrose, available in six branches and on www.waitrosedirect.com.
Early December is not just about stock-piling awesome wines for Christmas and New Year's Eve. It is also about buying top-flight reds to drink before the mad rush, which leave you with spare cash to splurge on the flash stuff later on. This means I drink a lot of red Rhne in the run up to the holidays.
Grapillon d'Or is a superb estate and the newly-released 2010s are devastating. 2010 is not a hot vintage, nor a rainy one it is somewhere in the middle. Wines with the potential to bloat with rain or scorch with sun often make exceptionally classy and surprisingly refined versions in what I term classically shaped' vintages.
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This means that the oft-hairy, brutish Gigondas (known as giggle juice' in my household) can be honed, suave and dashing. The recipe of Grenache with a splash of Syrah makes this an excellent winter wine with consummate food and wine-matching skills. Hearty, honest, long and thought-provoking, it will make you yearn for more southern Rhne blends.
Matthew Jukes is a winner of the International Wine & Spirit Competition's Communicator of the Year (www.matthewjukes.com).
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Matthew Jukes has worked in the UK wine business for well over three decades and during this time has written 14 wine books.
Matthew regularly lectures, judges, speaks at wine conferences and runs masterclass tastings for both corporate and private clients all over the world. Matthew is also the creator of his ground-breaking initiative, the One Day Wine School, an indulgent day of tasting and learning first performed in 2006.
He has been the MoneyWeek wine correspondent since 2006 and has written a weekly column for the Daily Mail’s Weekend Magazine since 1999. His four highly-acclaimed, annual wine reports – the Burgundy En Primeur Report, the Bordeaux En Primeur Report, the Piemonte Report and the 100 Best Australian Wines – are published on his website, www.matthewjukes.com.
Matthew is one of the world’s leading experts on Australian wine and, with Brisbane-based wine writer Tyson Stelzer, runs an annual competition in Australia to find ‘The Great Australian Red’. He was made Honorary Australian of the Year in the UK at the 2012 Australia Day Foundation Gala dinner.
Matthew is a winner of the International Wine and Spirit Competition's Communicator of the Year Trophy. His thoughts, recommendations and tastings notes are followed very closely by the wine world at large.
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