It’s Friday evening. After a cloudy, cool day we are being treated to a bright, warm-ish summer’s evening, and so I am sitting outside, glass in hand, blogging before I cook dinner.

One of the joys of the blog is that content can be of the moment. Unplanned; spontaneous. You get a pure communication, unfiltered and unfined.

Tonight Fiona is out, so it is just me and younger son. Steak is on the menu, which I’ll shortly cook on the barbie, following the advice I was given at a Gaucho Grill masterclass a couple of years ago.

Time, first, for some wine. It’s a natural wine from the Cotes du Rousillon; a blend of half Carignan, half Grenache, farmed organically and given a standard natural wine vinification – a variation on maceration carbonique in the absence of sulfur dioxide, and at low temperature.

Edouard Laffitte L’Echappee Belle ‘Le Bout du Monde’ NV Vin de Table de France
Lot 1/07 indicates the vintage of this naturally made Roussillon wine. It has a wonderfully fresh, bright nose of cherries, herbs, spice and a hint of undergrowth. The palate is fresh and fruity, but with lovely grainy, subtly sappy savouriness. It’s a wine with different levels: on one, it is fresh, fruity and easy to drink; on another, it has a more serious, savoury side that repays some contemplation. It tastes a bit like a natural wine – there’s a sort of freshness and elegance here, along with the sappy, spicy, undergrowth notes, but there’s also an indication of the terroir, too. I really like it – it’s the sort of wine where I’ll find it close to impossible to leave any in the bottle. 91/100 (Les Caves de Pyrene)