by Gareth Groves
When wine trade folk get together you can be certain of one thing: there will be far too many bottles on the table. Everyone brings more than they could possibly consume and still remain sensible – not out of a desire to end the evening passed out, face down in the cheeseboard, you understand, but because we are just so enthusiastic about fermented grape juice. We bring obscure bottles that no-one else would look twice at, we bring wines made by our winemaker chums and we bring whatever it is that has really floated our boat at recent tastings. We drink, eat and enthuse. After that we crack open the esoteric dessert wine (somebody always brings one) and then as the mini-cabs beckon we raid our host’s wine rack in search of something else. Anything else.
Last Saturday, I hosted one such gathering. Amongst some top notch wines from the Cape (I loved the Chamonix Sauvignon Blanc from Franschhoek), the Chateau Musar 2002 (surprinsingly fault-free) and one of my favourite Sicilians (from the always-excellent Tenuta delle Nere), one wine stood out. And it was the one nicked from the cupboard under the stairs at the end of the night: Mar d’Amunt Carinyena 2007 by Jean-Marc Lafage.
The wine is part of Lafage’s els Pyreneus range that celebrates the terroirs on both the French and Spanish sides of the Pyrenees. Made from old vine Carignan in Emporda in Spain, just a few miles from the French border it shows how good the Carignan grape can be.
Too often Carignan is derided as a good for nothing grape , or if not good for nothing, then only worth using as a bit-part player in a cheap blend; the sort of wines Andrew Jefford once called ‘petrol pump reds’. Admittedly, when planted on the wrong sites or when over-cropped, the grape can produce tough, charmless wines but old vines on poor soils (that naturally help to keep yields in check) can produce something else entirely.
There is a current trend amongst winemakers to ferment it in a Beaujolais-style using carbonic maceration. I am not a fan. Wines made this way are too soft and easy with an off-putting bubblegum aroma. Carignan should have some bite and body. It should have some tannin, spice and warmth. The best examples – like the Mar d’Amunt – have all this alongside ripe, perfumed black fruit with hints of damsons, olives and herbs.
Our wine of the week is a warming, peppery Mediterranean red that tastes of sunshine and stony soils. But don’t wait until the end of the night to open it – try it with some lamb chops rubbed with paprika and garlic next time you get the barbecue out.
Tags: Carignan, els Pyreneus, Spain, wine of the week