Château La Nerthe Les Cassagnes de La Nerthe Rouge 2022

Les Cassagnes de La Nerthe Rouge comes from the Massif d’Uchaux, an intimate, wooded area in the north of the Vaucluse, in the southern Rhône Valley. Château La Nerthe, a historic estate of Châteauneuf-du-Pape, farms vines there averaging 40 years of age, on varied, very free-draining soils of sand, clay and limestone rock fragments, which favour fleshy, balanced wines under the Mediterranean sun.

The harvest is sorted plot by plot. Colour and tannins are extracted gently, with several pump-overs a day. Grenache, Syrah and Mourvèdre are co-fermented together, for a long maceration of three to four weeks. The final blend is then aged for a year on fine lees, in stainless-steel or concrete tanks, without oak.

This wine reveals notes of red berries, plum, cherry, blackcurrant bud, liquorice stick, thyme, pepper and garrigue. Beneath a dark garnet colour, the nose combines fruit, flowers and herbaceous touches. The palate, balanced, moves between liveliness and roundness, with delicate tannins and a spicy finish that evokes Provence.

The cradle of wine culture in Western Europe, France owes its first vines to the Greeks of Phocaea, who settled around Marseille some twenty-six centuries ago, before the Romans spread viticulture along the Rhône and the Garonne and as far as Champagne. In the Middle Ages, Cistercian and Benedictine monks cleared the slopes of Burgundy and patiently mapped out the climats, laying the foundations of the notion of terroir. The 19th century brought the glory of the classifications, then the disaster of phylloxera, which wiped out the vineyards before they were rebuilt on American rootstocks; the creation of the appellations d'origine contrôlée in the 1930s then set the rules that would inspire the whole world. Today, France vies every year with Italy and Spain for first place in world production by volume and remains the ultimate benchmark of the Old World, as much for its age-worthy wines as for its winemaking models. Vineyards cover almost the entire country, from the cool north of Champagne and Alsace to the Mediterranean shores of Languedoc and Provence, by way of the oceanic climates of Bordeaux, the Loire and the South-West, continental Burgundy, the steep slopes of the northern Rhône and the high-altitude valleys of Savoie and the Jura. This mosaic of soils – limestone, schist, gravel or rounded pebbles – explains the extraordinary diversity of styles. As for grape varieties, Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot dominate Bordeaux and produce structured reds, Pinot Noir is the signature of Burgundian finesse, Syrah of the depth of the Rhône, while Grenache, Gamay, Cabernet Franc and Mourvèdre cover every register, from easy-drinking wines to wines for long ageing. Among the whites, Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, Chenin, Riesling and Viognier offer expressions ranging from lively and mineral to unctuous, all the way to great sweet wines. A land of benchmarks and constant discoveries, France remains the compass for wine lovers the world over.