A perfect winter warmer

This spectacular 'biodynamic' Vacqueyras from the southern Rhône is perfect with stews, finds Matthew Jukes.

Matthew Jukes
By
published
in Features

2006 Vacqueyras, Garrigues, Domaine Montirius, Southern Rhne, France (£11.95, Berry Bros & Rudd, 0800-2802 440, www.bbr.com ).

The biodynamic movement is gathering pace in the wine world. In theory, achieving a holistic balance between the soil, the vine and the air creates a happy and hardy plant.

The lack of man-made chemicals and fertilisers is clearly a good thing, but this mantra goes a few stages further by 'treating' the vine and the vineyard in harmony with the phases of the moon.

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In your biodynamic calendar there are fruit days, root days, leaf days and so on, it is on these days that you administer wholly natural tweaks and tinctures to your patient vines.

Now all of this would be poppycock if the resulting wines tasted poor, but, hand on heart, most biodynamically produced wines seem to have an integrity and worthiness about them that makes it all of the way from the vineyard to the glass. And this spectacular Vacqueyras is one such wine.

Stock up now, because this wine is a great price and it is the perfect winter warmer for stews and groaning cheese boards.

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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