Wine club - Roger Scruton suggests a wine for spring horrors
Published 25 April 2005
The horrors of spring can be countered with a rich Cotes du Rhone
Spring touches our clay-clogged pastures with her wand, turning mud to brick and squishy divots to dangerous potholes. Immediately, the landscape breaks into disorder and all the good work of winter is undone. Sleep-murdering sparrows tittle-tattle under the eaves; raucous
crows and machine-gunning magpies fight along the hedgerows;
insects burst in squadrons from the eggs sequestered by their evil parents; deer come ravaging into the copses, stripping the bark from tree after tree; rabbits undermine the fields; and the fox cubs make their first sorties in search of chicken. The whole ghastly business begins again, and with a suddenness that leaves no time to prepare your defences. All you can do is watch from the window, utter sighs of lamentation and despair, and wait for the moment at the end of the day when the commotion ceases, and the sun makes his getaway, leaving destruction in his wake.
Then, at last, you can turn aside in the darkness and draw the first cork. Something rich, strong and autumnal is needed at such an hour, and this Corney & Barrow has provided in its case of exquisite Rhones (opposite). Here is the opportunity to leave your frail body, traumatised by the proximity of new life, and to travel in the glass to a place that is warm, dry and declining.
The Cotes du Rhone appellation is here represented by a fine example - the Rubis - from the excellent 2001 vintage. The appellation has for many years obscured the quite distinct virtues of the villages that are subsumed by it. These villages have been fighting for their rights, with Vacqueyras achieving recognition in 1990. Now Rasteau (previously known only as a sweet white wine) has been admitted into the pantheon and this example, from the house of Tardieu-Laurent, shows the village to be on a par with the other greats of the Rhone. This densely knit and complex wine has a southern aroma of myrrh and wild thyme, with a dark and tannin-laden foundation that will ensure many years of peaceful and good-humoured development. The year 2002 was difficult for the Rhone, but Rasteau escaped the bad weather. You can now acquire a perfect example of a wine that, in future, may cease to be affordable.
The same producer's Crozes-Hermitage, also from 2002, is a striking contrast: Syrah against Grenache, bad weather against good, northern Rhone against southern. But the result is a fresh and cheerful wine, full of the joys of autumn - a wine made to drink with a large carnivorous feast, just as the Beaumes-de-Venise is made to accompany the subsequent dancing. This dessert wine is fortified with grape spirit to 15 per cent, but the Muscat grape masks the alcohol, to produce a glorious mouthful of sin in all its sweet and succulent variety.
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