A cold Lyon awaited us, but swiftly into the car to circumnavigate the airport three times before the United Nations got involved to tell the international community in the front seats THAT way. Safely cuddled into one of the five back seats I watched the dreary landscape scoot by until we finally saw the murky river with so many wonderful vines on its banks, yes Le Rhone.
Lucky 13 wines later we were on our way to Pierre Gaillard and all agreed the 2012 vintage is looking fine, elegant, pretty and sumptuously enjoyable. Pierre's daughter Jeanne met us to give us a thorough degustation of her Father’s wines and now many of her own, impressive wines from her straight Marsanne which has been a favourite of the Bancroft team since taking on the first vintage a few years ago. Next barrel tasting of several reds including St Joseph, Crozes Hermitage, Cornas, Asiaticus (the same vineyard shared with Mr Villard as mentioned above), an interesting new wine made purely with Merlot with great structure and poise like Anton du Beck - more Strictly! To complete an impressive array or reds from barrel were three fine Cote Roties. I now know why they are so admired. I will be amazed if 2012 doesn't get the high acclaim is deserves and we sell all very quickly. Back to the tasting room to see some soil samples to understand why Côte Rotie and Gaillard is up with the world’s greatest and globally sought after wines. We finished with two sweet Condrieu. I have few words but I am a large chap who enjoys his food and have been lucky enough to eat at many fine restaurants in the UK and overseas, but after these two beautiful wines I was happy not to have lunch. Considering it was closing in on 5pm this hopefully shows the pure brilliance of the wines we had and that I wanted to keep the luscious flavours for a few minutes or hours more. Very lucky.
Anyway, back in the car, now dark and raining, possible sleeting, with snow on the mountains in the distance we hot footed it (in the car) with the former Yugoslav rally driver to Domaine de Colombier. Not really knowing where we were heading even with Sat Nav, useless Doris, we eventually made it to Colombier nearly an hour late. Hungry, tired but exhilarated by two superb tastings we met the eccentric Mr Colombier to taste a few wines thankfully, as we have already been through 34. However, from the four cuvees we take we ended up tasting seven wines while the 12's were suitably impressive Neb put down a challenge voicing his opinion on the 2002 vintage as 'not very good'. We tasted Colombiers Hermitage 2002 under almost freezing conditions but ripe and warm with pure fruit it was the best 2002 Rhone I've tasted, then the 2007 which was more raspberry fruit. Apologies made and points notched up one nil to France we finished with the Hermitage Blanc with all its apricots, lime, orange peel, floral, nutty appeal (had to give tasting note as was delish). Great fun to finish off an amazing tasting afternoon/evening in the north, hoping to see Mr Colombier again soon in London as I feel he can throw some shapes at any nightclub that will accept us.
Another few hours in the car to get south, find our hotel, 15 mins to check emails and do the necessary before out to dinner at Le Forum in Orange, the attractive, historic village in the middle of the Southern Rhone. Apart from upsetting the 'very' French chef by asking him to hold the main course for a few minutes whilst the smoker took a phone call and have a well earned cigarette (to be fair he hadn't had one for 12 minutes). The meal was fine so we decided to book again for the next night to make life easy and the fact that sleepy Orange doesn't have a plethora of decent restaurants. Note to self to retire to Orange to open a quality bistro that's open six days a week. Bed beckoned after a 20 hour day and a long Tuesday ahead with five meetings. Don't worry, shorter blog for Day 2 to follow…
Written by Jason Busby, Director
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