A supple and impressive red for the summer

Matthew Jukes tastes an unoaked Châteauneuf-du-Pape, and finds it the most impressive top-end red he's had in years.

Matthew Jukes
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2008 Chteauneuf-du-Pape, La Rserve des Oliviers, Domaine Chante Cigale/Maison Favier, southern Rhne, France (£21, SWIG, www.swig.co.uk, 08000-272272).

I am assured that this wine arrives in the country in the next few days and that SWIG will have stock shortly thereafter, so please register your interest immediately, but allow a week or more for delivery.

This incredible wine is an unoaked, fruit-driven Chteauneuf and it is the first vintage of La Rserve des Oliviers ever made you are reading the first write up in the world! "Why would someone make an unoaked version of this classically oaked style of red wine?" I hear you cry.

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The answer is that this wine doesn't need any barrel flavours to prop it up, preferring to use the inbuilt complexity of fruit and spice and its extraordinary grenache, syrah, cinsault and mourvdre grapes to do the job admirably.

The benefit here is that this wine is incredibly supple and virtually ready to drink already (cheers!) and yet it still has all of the seriousness and intellect of a true Grand Vin with none of the usual drying tannins.

In fact, it might just be the most impressive, summery (you could chill it if you are very chic), top-end red I have tasted in years.

Matthew Jukes is a winner of the International Wine & Spirit Competition's Communicator of the Year.

Matthew Jukes
Matthew Jukes

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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