I am a regular golfer. This is not to everyone's taste, but it gives me a lot of pleasure, outdoor exercise and social interaction with a reasonably broad range of personalities. I do try to play to the best of my abilities although I have become comfortable with the idea that the only thing that is truly consistent about my playing is that I am inconsistent. Consistently inconsistent.
So it is with what I type. Only last week I told myself that the reason I write this blog is to encourage myself to try new wines and not always stick to those I already know and like. Well this week we have a wine I know I like. It is a staple of my vinous shopping list. It is:
It is such a regular choice of mine, and I know that I have made reference to it somewhere in this collection, that I had to use the search facility in my own blog to confirm that I hadn't chosen it as the weekly wine previously. Either I haven't or the search facility isn't what one should expect from a Google product.
Why is it such a repeated choice? Unlike me, it is consistent. It is good value and it can be relied upon to please guests, should we ever invite any.
It comes from the Southern Rhone and is somewhere towards the lower tiers of the classification hierarchy, not being even a Cotes du Rhone Village which requires the grapes to be sourced from a given set of locations. That means the grapes could come from anywhere in the Southern Rhone and you might think this would reduce the quality of the wine. It doesn't. It just means that it can't be sold as having been made from grapes grown in a more specific and limited place.
Guigal do make wines from the length of the Rhone Valley, including some very highly regarded sites in St Joseph and Cote Rotie, and of those I have tasted they all give great enjoyment.
In the Southern Rhone there are many wines made from a blend often referred to as GSM, standing for Grenache, Syrah & Mourvedre. Guigal have taken a slightly different approach as their's is a SGM blend, giving precedence to the Syrah. Regulations require that where more than one grape variety appears in a blend then they must be listed in descending order of proportion. The blend here is 50% 40% 10%.
They produce about 4 million bottles a year of this wine and I think it is a remarkable achievement that the contents of each bottle is predictable in terms of its characteristics.
The makers say it goes well with cold meats, meats, game bird and cheese. Also Twiglets, I think.
Buy again? Absolutely!
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