Get yourself a perfect every day wine, if you Ventoux

For many years now my first and last sightings of the southern sun and a proper starlit sky occur at the Domaine des Anges in Mormoiron in the Vaucluse.  I tend to go for a few days in mid-February and return for a similar length of time around the September equinox.

The estate rises from 350 metres above the valley floor to 450 metres, where typical Provencal maquis is crowned with a little chapel surmounted by an effigy of the Virgin in a blue gown. Across the valley is Mount Ventoux: the Giant of Provence, soaring to just under 2,000 metres or 6,300 feet. Driving up there this year, I was struck by the fact the temperature dropped by eight degrees. Vegetation ceased and any semblance of soil was replaced by rough chunks of chalky scree.

I knew very little about the Domaines des Anges before 1995 when I met its Irish proprietor, Gay McGuinness on a diverted flight from London to Zurich. He was going where he wanted to go. I was expecting to arrive in Vienna, but we have contrived to remain friends ever since.

Gay had acquired the domaine from a former advertising executive called Malcolm Swan. In 1973, Swan had had the vision to create the first independent wine estate in the Ventoux region. Up until then, the only bottlers had been the co-operative cellars together with a handful of shippers up and down the Rhone Valley. Ventoux wine had always been a bit of a Cinderella: a ‘vin de zinc’ consumed in bars and bistrots. It lacked the kudos of Côtes du Rhône Villages, such as Vacqeyras or Cairanne, let alone big batters like Châteauneuf-du-Pape or Gigondas.

Swan’s idea of creating a domaine in the Ventoux was resisted at first, but if the locals tried their best to stop him he received encouragement from Jacques Reynaud, the eccentric owner of the famous Château Rayas in Châteauneuf-du-Pape. By the nineties plenty of others had jumped on the Ventoux bandwagon, including the best known in Britain: Fondrèche, Château Valcombe and Pesquié.

Although there are some high-altitude estates above Bédoin and Flassans, closer to the mountain, most of the best-known lie on the valley floor that was previously known for fruit – particularly cherry – trees. It is hotter there and the clay soils are deeper. High grown grapes benefit from cooler nights which make the resulting wine more aromatic. Much of Gay’s subsoil is gypsum and one of the largest gypsum quarries in France is just over the hill in Mazan. Gypsum is thought to be especially good for white wines, and the Domaine des Anges surely makes some of the best in the Southern Rhone Valley. But, apart from sappy summer rosés, it is red wine that counts in the Ventoux. Traditionally this was made with Grenache Noir, a grape variety that produces plenty of fat and alcohol as well as a trademark redolence of the garrigue – wild thyme and rosemary.

The problem with Grenache is that it is sensitive to air, loses colour and ages fast; unless you reduce yields to a couple of bunches it needs a friend in the form of another variety to provide colour, reduce alcohol and stop oxidation. When the Ventoux went up-market, growers decided Grenache’s new friend would be Syrah: the grape that makes the best wine in the northern Rhone Valley. Even if the addition of Syrah failed to deliver the sublime quality of the best granite-grown wines of the Northern Rhone, it certainly improved the Ventoux’s reds. The problem today, however, is that Syrah fails to address the rapidly rising alcoholic content of the wine, brought on by ever-hotter summers and quasi-drought conditions during the spring and summer months. What growers need to do now is add Carignan: a less distinguished anti-oxidant variety which makes lots of juice and produces far less alcohol. I understand that this is now at the planning stage at the Domaine des Anges.

Made now by the local boy Florent Chave, the Domaine des Anges’s wines have never been better. The basic red, white and rosé, which sell from the cellar door at €8 seem to me to be perfect everyday wines, while the cuvées (cellar door €16) are wrought in a slightly creamy Burgundian style for the white (mostly Syrah) and red (purely Roussanne) ‘Archanges’. There are also minute quantities of pure Viognier Chérubin and pure Grenache Seraphin. Seraphin is made in amphorae from very old vines.

But I carry bad news: although the Domaine des Anges may be had in Ireland, both north and south, these excellent wines are almost unobtainable in Great Britain. So, to recommend a wine for you today, I  recently went along to the big 2017 Bordeaux cru bourgeois tasting at the Institute of Directors. The 2017s were not very nice, but fortunately there were some earlier vintages on display too. I admired a light and approachable 2016 Château Blaignan, a rather hefty 2014 Château Reysson, a big and sturdy 2010 Château Fonréaud and an equally robust 2014 Château Paveil de Luze; but it was a wine new to me that stole my heart: the 2014 Château Poitevin. This was everything that a cru bourgeois should be – if not the sun and the stars, it was supple, charming and elegant. It costs £17.95 from Lea & Sandeman.