Wine:Summer calls for light, fresh drinks. Rosé fits the bill perfectly.
Selling wine can be a tough job, but the Irishman David O'Brien, who owns Château Vignelaure, in the Coteaux d'Aix-en-Provence appellation, has a not very secret weapon: his Australian wife, Catherine. She's the mother of a large young family, and despite travelling around the world she is invariably good-humoured. She extols, in her attractively exuberant way, the virtues of her husband's husbandry of the estate they took over fully in the late 1990s, after working there in partnership from 1994.
At James Nicholson Wines's recent tasting in Dublin, she was showing the 2006 vintage of O'Brien's celebrated rosé, La Source de Vignelaure(€12.75), as well as four other impressive wines from their stable. (O'Brien is the son of the turf legend Vincent.) I had already got a preview of this sensuous, award-winning Provencal rosé when she sent me a tank sample in February with a short note guaranteed to arouse envy: "The weather here is so beautiful: cornflower-blue skies, brilliant sunshine and the promise of spring from the budding almonds followed by vines nurturing the fruit of 2007." Sipped on a cool evening, the rosé carried the spirit of Provence with its lively, mature fruit and good balance.
She also sent a bottle of one of their top wines, the awesome La Colline de Vignelaure2001, an elegant testimony to O'Brien's ability to craft a brilliantly balanced Merlot-dominated blend in the sunny south. The other variety is 20 per cent Cabernet Sauvignon. The critic Robert Parker had taken a shine to the wine, which spends 24 months in new French oak. I'm not surprised. This is a classy wine of great concentration and finesse, with a price to match: €36.95 a bottle.
At a more modest level, the O'Briens offer Ésprit de NijinskyCabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay 2005 (€9.99), easy-drinkers that, like the horse they are named after, will please the punters. See www.vignelaure.com.
Catherine O'Brien's personality casts a long shadow, and it was the luck of former marketing executive Charles Simpson - "I'm Irish too" - that he was in it, as they shared a table. It was all good banter, and Simpson, who with wife Ruth owns Domaine Sainte Rose, in Languedoc, relished the opportunity to show off his neat suite of wines, including the opulent Barrel Selection Roussanne 2005, which has just won a major award in the Top 100 Vins de Pays of France 2007 competition. His La Garrigue 2004, a dark, meaty, flavour-filled blend of Syrah, Grenache and Mourvèdre, was also impressive. See www.domaine-sainte-rose.com. All wines are available from www.jnwines.com
Earlier, at an event held by the distributor Woodford Bourne, we tasted some very exclusive wines, including two vintages (2002 and 2003) of the Super-Tuscans Ornellaiaand Masseto, with the stunningly intense Ornellaia 2003, a snip at €115 a bottle, the clear winner (from Terroirs, D4; Chester Beatty, Ashford,
Co Wicklow). There were also five vintages of the Burgundy grand cru Clos de Tart, from Morey-St-Denis. My favourite was the sublime 2001, a bargain of sorts at €140 (from Terroirs, D4; McCabes, Blackrock, Co Dublin; and the Gables, Foxrock, D18).
We also had some of W & J Graham's single-estate vintage port Quinta dos Malvedos 1996(€45), which reminded us how glorious this wine can be (from Redmonds, D6; Devaney's, D6; McCabe's, Co Dublin; Terroirs, D4; and Donnybrook Fair, D4).