Wine of the week: A work of art from Provence

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published 17 May 2022

2021 Château La Mascaronne, Rosé, Côtes de Provence, France

(£81.00, per six bottles in bond, laywheeler.com)

There are few properties in the south of France as breathtakingly beautiful as La Mascaronne. There are 60 hectares of organically farmed vines here, and they form one contiguous plot surrounded by oak and olive trees on all sides.

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Michel Reybier, owner of Château Cos d’Estournel, a 2ème Cru in Saint-Estèphe, and the elite La Réserve hotels in London, Paris, Geneva, Zurich and Ramatuelle, bought this exquisite estate in 2020, and I raved about his inaugural vintage last year. On the whole, 2021 is not as lush a vintage as 2020, and lesser wines feel a little skinny and undernourished.

However, the top estates have brought a singular definition and elegance to their creations, and La Mascaronne is nothing short of a work of art in 2021. I tasted this beauty back in March, and it has been a rare form of torture waiting for stock to make it to the UK. In the intervening months, I have tasted hosts of 2021s, and this wine soars above all others with its grace, refinement and impressively long finish.

This wine’s endearing hallmark flavours are English rhubarb, pomegranate arils and delicate pink melon tones balanced by crystalline acidity. While I tend to single out grenache-dominant wines in my scribblings, La Mascaronne is made from 40% grenache, 25% cinsault, 20% syrah and 15% vermentino. This layering of ingredients brings the kaleidoscopic flavours found in this divine creation.

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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.