Provençal Pairings: Wine with Food

I Turned Back Time

Winery: Château La Nerthe
Cuvée: Les Cassagnes
Appellation: Côtes du Rhône
Type: Rosé
Vintage: 2022
Grape Varieties: 60% Grenache, 30% Syrah, 20% Cinsault
Alcohol: 12.5%
Average Retail Price: U.S. $16.00

For today’s pairing, I turned back time (with a nod to Cher) to a recipe I that first tasted on Easter Island in 2019. It is a grain-forward dish that is complemented by a plethora of seasonal vegetables. I didn’t officially get a recipe from the hotel chef… just a list of ingredients. I put the rest together myself and recreated his Cremoso de Mote — a risotto-style dish using soft wheat berries. While I had this dish in South America, it has a distinctly Mediterranean ethos, and I knew it would be perfect with a French rosé, specifically one from the Southern Rhône region. Please visit Cocoa & Lavender to get the recipe.

It took a long time for the 2022 rosés to make it to the Sonoran Desert, but it was worth the wait. My first 2022 pairing, with my Cremoso de Mote, is with Château La Nerthe’s rosé “Les Cassagnes.” Its  blend of Grenache, Syrah, and Cinsault created a wine that is salmon pink in color, with a nose of wild strawberry, apricot, grapefruit, and a hint of banana.

At first, the wine drinks very crisp and dry, making it a lovely sipping wine without food — apéro here we come! But, with food, it remained bright and then opened up to become a creamy, soft wine with notes of red fruit, strawberry, white peach, and caramel, with just a touch of marshmallow on the finish.

It is a very reasonably priced wine, and will make a wonderful addition to your table. And, it seems pretty widely distributed in the United States.