£19.95–£22.50, Red & White, The Somerset Wine Company
I recommended the little sibling of this red last year, Petite Immortelle. Now it's time to trade up to Immortelle, an altogether more imposing wine – dark, intense, generous in flavour and texture with rich damson and hedgerow-berry fruit, allspice, dark chocolate and sweet leather, yielding tannins and exhilarating mineral vitality.
The wine is the creation of Master of Wine Liam Steevenson and French oenologist Pierrick Harang using the fruit of venerable, gnarly old vines in chalk, granite and schist soils owned and nurtured by the seventh-generation Bousquet family in the heart of Roussillon.
The grapes from these centenarian vines – Syrah (50%), Mourvèdre (30%), Grenache and Carignan – is vinified traditionally with a long maceration in open-top barrels, then aged on full lees in one-year-old barrels from Château Margaux.
Drink it now or anytime this decade or next, with roast or barbecued meat, vegetables or duck, cassoulet, bean gratins, tagines or hard cheeses.
14.5%. Empty bottle weight: 636g.
Immortelle 2019, Côtes du Roussillon Villages, Roussillon, France
£19.95, Red & White; £22.50, The Somerset Wine Company