WRITTEN BY BRIAN CARPENTER
La Petite Mort is the experimental label of Bent Road Winery on Ballandean Road in Stanthorpe’s Granite Belt Wine Region. Head winemaker, Glen Roberts, loves to play with alternative varietals and post modern winemaking techniques including amphorae, skin contact, and barrel fermentation.
The term ‘La Petite Mort’ is a classic French expression which loosely translates to ‘a momentary loss of consciousness in a transcendence of pleasure’, this can be applied to the pleasures of food, wine… and well other pleasurable activities that result in a climax…
This is one of his more classically styled small batch wines, the 2017 barrel fermented Marsanne. Marsanne is one of the three white varietals responsible for the incredible complex and fresh wines from the Northern Rhone Valley of France. Coming from the same ancestral home as Syrah, or Shiraz as we call it in Oz, it’s well suited to our climate here and definitely a winemaker’s favourite, even if it hasn’t achieved mainstream status just yet.
This Marsanne is one of our favourite wines for Shucks’ style of food and is perfect for some of our richer dishes like the prawn and pumpkin, the cauliflower steak, pan fried whiting, cuttlefish and saffron pasta.
It has ripe peach and lime zest aromas with generous toasty oak and a savoury salty component reminiscent of salted honey and vanilla roasted cashews. The palate is soft and broad showing its oak component but with a zesty limey clean finish.
