Domaine Gayda Chemin de Moscou 2019 - The Observer & The Guardian

Feet warming at fireplace with hand holding wine — ‘Lift spirits with a glass or two of a moderately priced, southern-sun filled red.’ Photograph: Alamy

Mood-boosting, taste-of-sunshine wines for a chilly January

Sun 9 Jan 2022

Domaine Gayda Chemin de Moscou, IGP Pays d’Oc France, 2019 (£25.99, Cambridge Wine Merchants) The GSM blend based on grenache and/or shiraz plus mataro and others is the base of many of Australia’s finest reds. But its origins are in southern France, producing wines that can feel like a transfusion of mood-boosting sunlight at this time of year. You can get some of that Mediterranean hillside feel in bottles from the Languedoc, such as Sainsbury’s Taste the Difference Saint-Chinian (£9), or from the Rhône Valley, such as Marks & Spencer’s superb Les Closiers Lirac 2019 (£10). That’s true, too, of the latest vintage of one of my favourite wines from one of my favourite Languedoc producers. The darkly concentrated, blackberry, black olive, pepper and rosemary of Domaine Gayda’s Chemin de Mouscou, served with roast lamb, is my prescription for seeing off the winter blues.

Follow David Williams on Twitter @Daveydaibach

ARTICLE – THE GUARDIAN