‘It went very well with the lamb and, in order to keep the half bottle left over, I’ve stored it in the fridge.’ Wine writer RICHARD CALVER has no qualms about keeping red wine cool. 

It was the normal Sunday dinner with my son, but I decided to elevate the meal by making Gratin Dauphinois, a recipe from the book I recently reviewed, At the Table in Paris.

This is a dish heavy on dairy products: milk, butter and cream. The potatoes must be pre-boiled in milk and cream and then cooked in the oven until a golden brown colour is achieved.

These potatoes go well with any meat dish and I served them with lamb that had been marinated in balsamic vinegar and rosemary. 

In the first instance I offered my son a Château Mont-Redon Lirac 2022, one of the few French wines I have in my collection.

This is a mid-weight grenache, shiraz mourvèdre blend that is sourced from vineyards located near Chateauneuf du Pape in the Southern Rhone Valley.

I tasted the wine at a function last year and noticed then that it is a perfumed and supple wine with a subtle cherry flavour enhanced by oak. But alas, my son was not drinking; he was giving his liver a rest.

Hence, I decided not to open what is a $60 wine for my own consumption but to still go with a French wine – a 2022 Chateau Mont-Redon Cotes du Rhone, which is well made and affordable at around $25 a bottle. 

The Mont-Redon Cotes du Rhone is a blend of grenache and syrah (shiraz). It’s well balanced with a little grip from the tannins, but not overly fruit-forward like some Australian grenache blends or varietals.

This Cote du Rhone has a savoury finish although it is not as mouth filling as many wines from the Rhone Valley of a higher category (there are four levels of wine with grand cru the best).

It went very well with the lamb and, in order to keep the half bottle left over, I’ve stored it in the fridge. It remains my belief that in this country we serve white wine too cold and red wines too warm. Room temperature of the mid-to-high 20Cs is too hot for red wines. 

The Cote du Rhone wines are an integral part of the ancient Rhone Valley. It is a very large appellation: according to one of the first wine tomes I bought some time ago, Hugh Johnson’s World Atlas of Wine, it covers 33,500 hectares.

The famous Châteauneuf-du-Pape is the heart of the region. Ever since I first read Johnson’s description of the region (1985!) I’ve wanted to visit, but have yet to do so.

Listen to what he says: “Who cannot picture the vast engineering of the Romans. Lizards alert on its slumbering stones, patches of early vegetables screened around against the wind, the pines and almonds yielding to olive groves as you go south – and always, on a hillside or plain, sand or chalk, the cross-stitch of vines.” 

I’m planning a trip in 2027. And that reminds me of the story of the German who was visiting the south of France. When asked: “Occupation?”, he replied: “No, no, just visiting.”