Walls: Domaine de la Mordorée’s La Plume du Peintre; then and now

Like all insufferable dads, the other day I was lecturing my son about the music I grew up with, so I played him some early jungle over breakfast.

In retrospect, some of it sounds like a drum kit falling down the stairs, but a few tracks, despite their radical style, have stood the test of time.

It’s not just music that goes through different styles and fashions, wines do too. Take Châteauneuf for example. In the late 1990s and early 2000s it went through its ‘modern’ period, characterised by extreme ripeness and new oak.

Today, this style couldn’t be less fashionable, with winemakers instead seeking freshness and balance.

At the time, one of the wines associated with that extreme style was Domaine de la Mordorée’s La Plume du Peintre. I recently had the chance to revisit the 2003 and 2005, and compare with the 2019 and 2022. I was keen to see how they looked 20-plus years on.

Are we right to deride that style today, or were winemakers actually onto something?

Scroll down to see Matt Walls’ notes and scores for 10 Domaine de la Mordorée La Plume du Peintre wines

Queen of the woods

In French, a mordorée is another name for a bécasse, a small game bird known in English as a woodcock. It’s the emblem of Domaine de la Mordorée, which is now in the hands of Ambre Delorme. She uses the creature’s various nicknames for some of her other cuvées: La Reine des Bois (The Queen of the Woods), La Dame Rousse (The Redheaded Woman) and La Dame Voyageuse (The Travelling Lady).

It was her father Christophe Delorme, who died aged 52 in 2015, that first developed the Plume du Peintre range. This name – which translates as ‘the painter’s quill’ – also refers to their feathered friend.

Ambre says it’s the name of a small colourful feather found on the woodcock’s wing that hunters take as a trophy; it’s also used by artists to sign their finished canvases.

The Plume du Peintre process

Domaine de la Mordorée is located in Tavel, but also has some excellent vineyards over the river in Châteauneuf, including some very old vines grown on galets roulés on the plateau of La Crau. Though the exact blend changes from vintage to vintage, the La Plume du Peintre Châteauneuf is always based on this parcel as it delivers particularly structured, powerful wines.

It isn’t produced every year. The first vintages were in 2003 and 2005, made by Christophe, then, after a long hiatus, Ambre produced a 2019 and a 2022.

She accompanies her best parcels through the growing season, then, if volumes are sufficiently generous and she feels that ‘something is happening here’, she will isolate plots and vinify and age them separately. Then it’s a case of ‘taste, taste, taste’, and if the quality is high enough, they are bottled separately as La Plume du Peintre.

La Plume du Peintre Lirac and Tavel

During the gap between the original and recent vintages of La Plume du Peintre Châteauneuf-du-Pape, the range started encompassing other appellations, but ‘it’s always a story of old vines’, says Ambre, ‘as that’s where you find the complexity’.

Domaine de la Mordorée produced La Plume du Peintre Lirac rouge in 2012 and 2016, Lirac blanc in 2017 and 2023, and Tavel in 2019, 2022 and 2023. All are drinking well now, with particular highlights being the Lirac blanc 2023 and Tavel 2023. (See tasting notes below).

Changing tastes

The 2003 and 2005 vintages of La Plume du Peintre Châteauneuf offer a clear contrast to the 2019 and 2022, and these two pairs provide a neat illustration of how times and tastes have changed in the region.

The 2003 and 2005 are huge wines of extreme ripeness, with toasty oak, potent alcohol and robust tannins – very much wines of their day. The alcohol in the 2003 feels particularly high, but the 2005 finds balance despite its proportions, and exhibits more freshness and harmony than the 2003, which is almost a caricature of Châteauneuf, but it’s undeniably complex and offers huge hedonistic pleasure.

The 2019 and 2022 are very different; picked at a more restrained level of ripeness, without such invasive oak treatment, they feel more precise and focused, if less high-spirited and exuberant.

La Plume de Peintre Châteauneuf-du-Pape vintages

2003: One third each of Grenache, Syrah and Mourvèdre from lieux-dits La Crau and Bois de la Ville; aged in new oak barriques for 12 months.

2005: Pure Grenache from La Crau; aged in new oak barriques for 12 months.

2019: Pure Grenache from La Crau; aged in two-year-old barriques for 10 months.

2022: 80% Grenache, 10% Syrah and 10% Mourvèdre, from lieux-dits La Crau and La Nerthe; aged in two-year-old barriques for 10 months.

Positive evolution

The 2003 vintage was like nothing the region had seen before – a year of intense heat and drought. Such extreme conditions were a novelty at the time, and they offered new opportunities to explore, opening up possibilities that chimed with prevailing tastes.

Many modern Châteauneufs of this era have since collapsed under their own weight, but the 2005 Plume du Peintre shows that some wines of this period excelled and will continue to provide pleasure for decades.

Today, most of us would rather enjoy a more balanced, fresher expression, and the winemaking approach in 2019 and 2022 has evolved to suit current appetites. Though still concentrated and powerful, they’re more approachable and precise than those earlier years, though Ambre wonders if they’ll age for quite as long.

Like early jungle music, the modern Châteauneufs are relics of their time, experiments with very mixed results. Most contemporary versions are more measured, no longer in thrall to extreme ripeness, and certainly easier to drink.

But the most successful wines of that era have a raucous fun and infectious enthusiasm that’s hard not to love.

Domaine de la Mordorée La Plume du Peintre

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