With first rotisserie chicken of the season. Out of a blue sky the black clouds suddenly gathered, it began to spit with rain and then I knew it was time to barbecue. Shaking my fist in defiance at the Gods of Blighty, I was rewarded with only squally winds blowing my burners out on three or four occasions, but the rains, they were abated.
What to say about the accompanying wine? This is my third bottle of this. The first, a couple of years ago was a little meh. Nothing terribly or obviously wrong, just not showing anything other either. The second, seemed more developed, but was a pretty classic Chateauneuf in so many ways. Spicy, slightly earthy, with that molasses sugar thing that for me identifies a wine as Chateauneuf rather than any of the surrounding appellations. More interesting, but not quite what I was hoping for. Given the ridiculous price these sell for, I was considering putting the other six-pack on the chopping block. After all, I could replace these with a more generic version and still have plenty of shekels left over to buy something else.
This bottle has probably changed my mind.
On opening it seemed pretty similar to the previous bottle, but seemed a little more open still. After about half an hour it began to really bubble up with the magic. Whilst the palate still tended towards a fairly classic Chateauneuf style, the wine started to churn out an extraordinary bouquet of pure peony over a base of framboise or kirsch with a strangely jarring edge of white pepper thrown in for a bit of tension. The wines of Rayas are often described as Burgundian, with which I’d generally agree, with the caveat that the resemblance is not in the actual range of smells, but more in the sense that the bouquet is the thing and the palate is more of secondary interest.
Be that as it may, this has the Rayas magic after all, albeit a sort of country cousin version (if this has reached its apogee - and that’s not absolutely certain at this point). There’s nothing to suggest that this is going to head towards the refinement of bouquet and palate that is possible with the senior wine, but it certainly has enough to warrant its place in the cellar.
