Blog… A French affair…

Blog… A French affair…

This week’s blog highlights the most popular French wine at last Saturday’s Bastille Day tasting.

A white wine stole the show at last Saturday’s Bastille Day tasting in store with our wine team – and it’s a surprising hero of a white too because it comes from a French wine region best known for hearty reds - the Cotes du Rhone.

Every warm Mediterranean climate needs its refreshing crisp whites too, however, so perhaps it’s no surprise to find that the 2016 Paul Jaboulet Cotes du Rhone Blanc was everybody’s favourite wine of the afternoon.

Like many southern French whites, this wine contains a fun, eclectic and generally unheard of mixture of different grape varieties – it’s made from 50% Grenache Blanc, 20% Marsanne, 20% Viognier and 10% Bourboulenc.

And how does it taste? Full bodied, crisp, dry and peachy – that’s Viognier for you – but where does the fresh crisp acidity come from?

The answer is: Bourboulenc, which is a high acid, late ripening grape which adds powerful citrus and floral aromas to southern French white wines. It’s best known as a blending grape in white Chateauneuf du Pape and is also planted in the Languedoc and Minervois appellations in southern France.

A little obviously goes a long way because all of the other components in this lovely dry, full bodied white wine, tend to be low in acidity and provide wines with body and lots of flavour.

All up, this white is a great alternative for Chardonnay drinkers, who will enjoy its full bodied, weighty style, its peachy taste and its somewhat different flavour profile.