Word on the vine - Mourvèdre

The sun-drenched grape in spicy, powerful Provençal and Spanish reds is a perfect match for roasted or slow-cooked red meat

THE GRAPE

This dark red, thick-skinned, tannic grape forms the backbone of Châteauneuf-du-Pape but plays a supporting role to grenache and cinsault in the Rhne. Mourdre reaches its nest epression in the single-varietal wines of Bandol, east of Marseille, and lends heft to Languedoc blends too. In Spain, where it is called monastrell, it is the country’s second most important red grape variety. Mourvèdre was formerly known as mataro in cheap blends from California and Australia, but it’s increasingly used in both to produce Rhne-style wines of nesse.

THE TASTE

Full-bodied, spicy and powerful, the bottle-aged wines of Bandol drip with a spectrum of inky, purpley avour blackberry, liuorice and violet, plus meat so gamey it might be road kill. The grape’s intense avour can be softened by being blended with merlot and syrah, as is often the practice in Spain.

THE PAIRINGS

The meaty reds of Bandol are possibly the last thing one would wish to drink on a scorching afternoon on the Côte d’Azur (mourvèdre rosé is rather more appealing in the heat) but, transplanted to a chilly day in the UK, these are classic cool- weather wines. Think red wine to go with red meat and you won’t go wrong roast lamb, medium-rare sirloin, pasta in a rich rag
or something provincial, French and slow-cooked from Elizabeth David daube de boeuf, perhaps. Nice with a barbecue too.

THE VINES

Mourvèdre needs hot summers to ripen reliably – which is not an issue on the south-facing slopes of Bandol, where many vineyards are planted on terraces basking in the shimmer of the Mediterranean, and the warmest plots of the Languedoc. The late-ripening grape also thrives on the sun-drenched Spanish coast between Valencia and Alicante known as the Levante.

This article was taken from the March 2024 issue of Food and Travel. To subscribe today, click here.