Marcel Richaud Cairanne 2000
Posted on 2 May 2011
I love Rhône wines and I made it a resolution for 2011 to drink them more often. (It’s not a very well-represented region on the Polish market). I’ve been enjoying some cheap & cheerful bottlings including a 5€ Côtes du Rhône from Leclerc supermarket. But more ambitious wines have been a bit patchy. Many, like the 2006 Gourt de Mautens, have erred on the very ripe side, resulting in rich concentrated wines with a drinkability handicap. And drinkability is something I want loads of in a Rhône wine.
Today, however, was one of those days everything just went well. Weather was beautifully sunny and fresh, my veal tajine cooked just fine, and my apéritif Riesling was poised and thirst-quenching. From the moment I popped the cork in the Marcel Richaud Côtes du Rhône-Villages Cairanne 2000, I knew I was in for a treat. This was Rhône at its best: deep ripe fruits, the power of earth, harmoniously dry, no oak in sight, just drinking beautifully.
Earthy fire and silky fruit: Rhône at its very best.
At first this is a little tight and reduced on the nose: stewed and roasted meat, some salt too. But at soon as you take a sip, you are drowned in ripe, broad, sensual Grenache fruit before finishing again a little meaty and peppery (this wine can easily go on another 4–5 years). The balance is nothing short of masterly: only 13% alcohol in that ripe vintage, and even with its considerable concentration and almost oily texture, there is never a moment of the wine being burdened or overweight. Drinking at peak now, and a fantastic wine for the 19.50€ I paid for it – gives a 2000 Châteauneuf-du-Pape at three times the price a run for its money.
Marcel Richaud is widely considered the best vintner in Cairanne, one of the leading villages in the Côtes du Rhône AOC. His 50 hectares are farmed biodynamically (although that sounds a lot for BD farming!), and the wines have real personality. Yet I don’t unanimously love them. Some are, as many Rhône wines today, a little too rich for my taste. The top cuvée from old vines, L’Ebrescade, has become a late-harvesty quasi-dessert wine of late: the 2003 vintage (admittedly an extreme one but representative of the tendency here) was 16.55% alc. with 15 g of residual sugar! Interestingly it’s the Cairanne (Richaud’s third label counting from the top) that I usually like best here. Perhaps because it sees no oak; another interesting factor is the 35% Mourvèdre that comes to balance Grenache with its meaty, peppery drive.
The tajine was consumed by a happy bunch and the ravishing springtime weather continued. The 2000 Richaud Cairanne opened up with air, filling that mild gap at mid-palate with rich raspberry fruit, picking more weight, showing that hot-stoney, dense, fiery expression of the best Rhône wines. What a serious bottle. It’s only a Côtes du Rhône, yet I’d place this at the very top of what Grenache can do.
Disclosure
Source of wine: own purchase.