Jefford on Monday

What’s a decade? One-fifth of a working lifetime, in most cases: a significant span. I’m now home after the tenth year of sitting in judgment as a panel chair for the Decanter World Wine Awards – for Regional France on this occasion. What have I learned?

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It was gold in colour, though a little deeper than usual: the colour of my grandmother’s wedding ring. The aromas rolled out like a slow wave at the end of a great ocean: sinuous, seamless, grand. There was wax, incense, menthol, crushed walnut, cheese nestled in straw; there were summer fruits left out on an old stone wall until they had very nearly dried rigid, with just a little acid-spangled fructose left in them. The wine was banquet-like, but not a waterfall of flavour, as Montrachet is. This was, more literally, a knife-and-fork enterprise; the tannins fell softly, like wet snow. It was chewy but gentle, weighty yet lifted, gristly, quietly garrulous.

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I live in the Languedoc, but I try not to write about it too often: I don’t want to bore you all. It’s been just six weeks since the last home post, but a vertical tasting has left me enraptured, and I can’t contain myself. Sorry.

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Empty bottles lined the windows, greening the grey Tbilisi afternoon; I sat next to Metropolitan Davit of Alaverdi in the gathering gloom. We stared together at a deeply coloured white wine in our glasses. It had been made at his monastery.

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It seemed a good plan. Take one day at the Rhône Découvertes tasting in Avignon. Some of the world's greatest wine bargains go to market as Côtes du Rhône or Côtes du Rhône-Villages. Taste nothing else; try to discover as many new ones as possible. What could be a better use of eight hours?

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