Cooling red for hot days.
In yesterday’s heat we had our first taste of Roc Primeur since it was bottled
With hamburger on a hot day this red wine, straight from the fridge is just brilliant. But it isn’t what you expect from a Bordeaux Red. Not at all. But then…that was the whole idea.
It’s a wine we ourselves persuaded a young winemaker to attempt. We had access to some superb fruit from the limestone ridge south of the Dordogne. Which is why it’s called ‘Roc’.
But ‘Roc’ is exactly the opposite of what this red is. Roc is hard. This wine is soft as can be. I doubt anyone’s ever made a Bordeaux red this soft. He used ingenious new, cold-soak techniques and rare yeasts.
It’s a game-changer of a wine. The Telegraph’s Victoria Moore loves it. But the first two customers to rate it didn’t.
Well… that’s what you get if you turn things in their head. This soft merlot-with not a trace of tannic bite served at room temperature just slides too easily down the throat. And it’s quickly gone. So chill it. That slows thing up. Makes all the difference. Eyes shut you wouldn’t know what colour it was.
Its based on the Roc Clairet 2020 which went down so well last year. But in 2021 the sun shone less. So grape sugar levels were too low for us to make another big wine. But we in Gentle Riot are French, mostly, so we shrugged and just let the vintage express itself and out came this pretty fresh fruit and flowers wine which was just so delicious drawn straight from the vat. So why wait? We bottled it immediately…as a ‘Primeur’…a first-of-the-season wine; the cool red for hot days.
