Review: Les Deux Cesars Blanc 2011, Domaine Sainte Rose IGP

This guest blog is from Laura Hadland who blogs at Extreme Housewife. In this post, she reviews a sample of Les Deux Cesars Blanc 2011, available now from Just Great Wine.

The label gives a romantic tale about a broken Roman coin found in the vineyard - which demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of the Tetrarchy, established by the Emperor Diocletian as a response to the various crises in the Empire during the third century. But I'll let them off, Domaine de Sainte Rose are clearly aiming more to be winemakers than historians and it makes a nice story. Plus (and I don't know whether this is intentional) this wine is made from a nice blend of four grape varieties, which does represent the two emperors and two caesars which made up the system quite nicely.

The wine is a pleasant pale straw colour. It has a floral, light smell. It is very delicate on the nose, not over powering at all, which I thought boded well for a nice, light white. And at the first taste, I was proved right. The flavour is very smooth, with a very faint creaminess - nothing like the over the top butteriness of a Chardonnay, but very pleasant texturally.

There is a pleasant citrusy flavour to this wine - a light grapefruit flavour or even perhaps a faint lemony taste, but it is definitely not overly acidic. It is refreshing, rather than punchy. This means it has a soft finish, which makes it very drinkable. It is hard to pinpoint more subtle flavours in the wine, perhaps because it is a blend of so many varieties, but it is certainly a very successful mix.

The light flavour is quite delicate - I think it would match nicely with a light lunch - perhaps a fish or salad dish. The slightly lower alcohol content means I think that you could match it with a zingy chilli flavour - I'm thinking chilli squid or something like that. We tried it on it's own, without food, and found that it matched very well with chilling on the sofa, watching Hot Fuzz.

You can get this wine for £10.52 per bottle. I asked The Boy how much he would be prepared to pay, without telling him the retail value and he said about £8, which considering he would always pick a red over a white is testimony to how enjoyable this wine is - he would always pay less for a good white!

You can follow Laura on Twitter here and view her blog here.

Les Deux Cesars Blanc is available to buy exclusively from Just Great Wine.