Maurice dancing across the ‘cherry bomb’ mix

Wine author RICHARD (Maurice) CALVER celebrates Worldwide Grenache Day with a bottle of the 2020 Château Saint Maurice Les Parcellaires Grenache Shiraz mix.

IT’S simple to think about devoted days, weeks and even months associated to a selected matter or object as a ache. However on September 16 it was Worldwide Grenache Day, a matter I discovered from the beautiful folks at French Aptitude in Manuka. 

And, to be honest, we every have our personal special occasion, and my birthday may be very near the celebration of this varietal. 

I stroll to the Manuka outlets to do my purchasing and if it’s late afternoon on a Saturday I normally name into French Aptitude to see what they’ve on style.  

To maintain my sobriety and to pave the best way for return tastings, I normally restrict my Saturday afternoon indulgence to 1 style. 

So within the lead as much as Worldwide Grenache Day, I spoke with Nicole Rebut, of French Aptitude, at their Palmerston Lane store. She stated they’d a ten per cent low cost on all grenache-related wines as a strategy to rejoice the day.

Nicole stated: “Grenache just isn’t effectively appreciated however I like the chocolatey, cherry flavours of a superb grenache. I like its juiciness, prefer it’s received extra quantity within the mouth.”   

She provided me a style of the 2020 Château Saint Maurice Les Parcellaires Grenache Shiraz mix. 

“Wow,” I stated. “It’s like a cherry bomb.”

Nicole stated: “That’s due to the excessive alcohol quantity at 14.5 per cent.”

I received the low cost on a bottle, and that made it round $30, noting to Nicole the felicity of the identify – Maurice being my center identify, which I received from my maternal grandfather. 

I served this wine to my kids at my birthday dinner, which they cooked for me. The grenache mix was not served with the principle course of chilli prawns the place we indulged and paired an ambrosia of a wine, a Domaine Cordier Pouilly Fuisse 2016 chardonnay. This very good drop tasted of brioche and peach stones and was in splendid concord with the meals. All of us thought ideas of heaven (which with this present birthday is a step nearer for me – if I get there!). 

The grenache was served with cheese (after an explosion at a French cheese manufacturing unit all that was left was de brie) and opened up with meals, after initially disappointing with its fruit bang. It might do with laying down for some time, as I needed to after this indulgent dinner.

I indicated to my kids that I had regarded up the Worldwide Grenache Day web site and the grape is Spanish. Grenache originated within the Aragon area of northern Spain, the place it is called Garnacha. From there it has been cultivated in Sardinia, Southern France and the San Joaquin Valley in California. 

It was an early starter in Australia the place one other web site informed me that it was one of many unique set of types imported by James Busby in 1832. He was the bloke who began the Australian wine business along with his 323 cuttings that survived the harrowing journey to this nation from Europe. 

Setting apart historical past, I swirled the wine in my glass, and provided yet one more opinion to my captive viewers: “I do favor grenache in a mix. 

“I favor the grenache, shiraz, mourvedre GSMs, additionally greatest from the Cotes de Rhone like this Saint Maurice. You’ll be able to’t beat Chateauneuf du Pape, which was the primary official appellation to categorise the GSM mix. That’s positively the wine for subsequent 12 months’s birthday.”

Statistics present that those that have essentially the most birthdays, reside the longest.