A new supplier in the Côtes du Rhône
I replied to the entreaties of Sales & Marketing Manager, Nadine Cattanea, in autumn 2008, and told her as unequivocally I could that her proposed visit would be a waste of time, because we had all the Côtes du Rhône wine we needed, thank you very much.
Nonetheless, since my best effort at unequivocal is a fairly pale imitation of the real thing, I did let slip that our list might one day be the better for something really interesting from a named village (a bit rarer and finer than a generic Côtes du Rhône or CdR Villages).
Ms Cattanea at this point, reasonably enough, saw her chance and visited anyway. I find, looking back, I recorded the occasion with a blog post and photo.
To the chase, anyway - we did, eventually, need to refresh our Côtes du Rhône offering, and the first company we thought of was, naturally, Les V des 4 C. So now we have some very delicious, new-and-exclusive wines for you; and enthusiastic repeat purchasing, when they've only been on the shelves a couple of weeks, suggests that we're on to another good thing. You may have read here, if you take Decanter, that French wines, including cheap Côtes du Rhône, are in trouble in the UK - though Rhône wines overall didn't do as badly as the rest.
Here's the line-up, anyway:
- a basic Côtes du Rhône in red or white;
- another Côtes du Rhône from a smaller domaine;
- a red wine from the village of Chusclan;
- a red and a white wine from the village of Laudun.
If the refreshing, focused fruit and spicy, velvet depths of the 4 Chemins reds don't hit the spot, I'll air-dry my hat with a view to slicing and eating it.
