Wine writer RICHARD (Maurice) CALVER celebrates International Grenache Day with a bottle of the 2020 Château Saint Maurice Les Parcellaires Grenache Shiraz blend.

IT’S easy to think of dedicated days, weeks or even months related to a particular topic or object as a pain. But on September 16 it was International Grenache Day, a matter I learned from the lovely people at French Flair in Manuka. 

And, to be fair, we each have our own special day, and my birthday is very close to the celebration of this varietal. 

I walk to the Manuka shops to do my shopping and if it’s late afternoon on a Saturday I usually call into French Flair to see what they have on taste.  

To keep my sobriety and to pave the way for return tastings, I usually limit my Saturday afternoon indulgence to one taste. 

So in the lead up to International Grenache Day, I spoke with Nicole Rebut, of French Flair, at their Palmerston Lane shop. She said they had a 10 per cent discount on all grenache-related wines as a way to celebrate the day.

Nicole said: “Grenache is not well appreciated but I love the chocolatey, cherry flavours of a good grenache. I love its juiciness, like it’s got more volume in the mouth.”   

She offered me a taste of the 2020 Château Saint Maurice Les Parcellaires Grenache Shiraz blend. 

“Wow,” I said. “It’s like a cherry bomb.”

Nicole said: “That’s because of the high alcohol volume at 14.5 per cent.”

I got the discount on a bottle, and that made it around $30, noting to Nicole the felicity of the name – Maurice being my middle name, which I got from my maternal grandfather. 

I served this wine to my children at my birthday dinner, which they cooked for me. The grenache blend was not served with the main course of chilli prawns where we indulged and paired an ambrosia of a wine, a Domaine Cordier Pouilly Fuisse 2016 chardonnay. This superb drop tasted of brioche and peach stones and was in splendid harmony with the food. We all thought thoughts of heaven (which with this current birthday is a step closer for me – if I get there!). 

The grenache was served with cheese (after an explosion at a French cheese factory all that was left was de brie) and opened up with food, after initially disappointing with its fruit bang. It could do with laying down for a while, as I had to after this indulgent dinner.

I indicated to my children that I had looked up the International Grenache Day website and the grape is Spanish. Grenache originated in the Aragon region of northern Spain, where it is known as Garnacha. From there it has been cultivated in Sardinia, Southern France and the San Joaquin Valley in California. 

It was an early starter in Australia where another website told me that it was one of the original set of varieties imported by James Busby in 1832. He was the bloke who started the Australian wine industry with his 323 cuttings that survived the harrowing journey to this country from Europe. 

Setting aside history, I swirled the wine in my glass, and offered yet another opinion to my captive audience: “I do prefer grenache in a blend. 

“I prefer the grenache, shiraz, mourvedre GSMs, also best from the Cotes de Rhone like this Saint Maurice. You can’t beat Chateauneuf du Pape, which was the first official appellation to classify the GSM blend. That’s definitely the wine for next year’s birthday.”

Statistics show that those who have the most birthdays, live the longest.