Le Chant: Making the Red Cock Rock

Certain wines’s got their own kinda rhythm and beat, and they got soul. Reminding me of music and all its varied diversity.

Cabernet Sauvignon, well, a great Cabernet gets the mind thinkin’ ’bout a rock-solid, muscular track nearing on perfection that hits all the spots with power in melody, draws you along into another world strutting between the boisterous and the beauty. Kinda like Bob Seger’s “Roll Me Away”. It’s about the moment of here and now, gruff and real and poetic, with a vivid edge of danger and seduction.

Shiraz, well, a good Shiraz is akin to the magic made by Barry White – Mister Barry White, that is. This be velvety and slick, with scents of nightclub sweat, a grip of gleaming dark flesh and overall wanton decadence of the sex driven kind. Pinot Noir: a long, slow dive into gleaming brass-heaven, spiralling melodies that duck and dive, veering off-course into unplanned realms. The kind found in a John Coltrane jazz track.

All this talk of music be relevant, as when talking to the kid called Petri Venter about his Le Chant Rouge, a blended red wine bringing together one heck of a broad range of grape varieties, the kid reckons putting a blend like this together from different vinous notes is like composing a tune. And for this tune of Le Chant Rouge 2020, the kid throws in three classic Bordeaux varieties, namely Merlot (42%), Cabernet Sauvignon (24%) and Cabernet Franc (20%), with Shiraz (5%) and Sangiovese (4%) before two more Bordeaux numbers make an appearance, with Malbec (3%) and Petit Verdot (2%).

The grape-things grow on Le Chant’s spread out Polkadraai Hills, south-west of Stellenbosch, coastal, being around eight kilometres from the Atlantic Ocean at False Bay. Le Chant Rouge 2020 is only the second version of this red blend under the label bearing that now-familiar image of a bulky, solid crowing rooster aiming to be Charles Aznavour, but looking like Elvis Presley. This cock, a tribute to Le Chant’s origins, namely a winery owned by the French company Oddo Vins et Domaines.

“Blending wines is like producing a piece of music where the instruments are played by different parts of nature,” says Petri, getting back to the music analogy. “You have various vineyards of diverse varieties, and the aim is to create a harmonious whole in one wine representing the best aspects of each of the varieties, as well as capturing the unique effects your specific terroir has on the different grapes.”  And 2020 was a great year for getting this kind of thing going.

“The mild summer conditions of 2020 led to slow ripening of the grapes, ensuring optimal ripeness with concentrated flavours in the small, tight bunches,” says Petri. “This quality of fruit allowed for an astonishing palette of flavours to work with in creating the Le Chant Rouge blend, and the superb vintage conditions are evident in the just-released wine from 2020.”

To add scope and verve, the seven grape varieties were vinified separately and aged in a variety of vessels – oak barrel, foudre and cement – for 24 months. Only then would Petri sit down before the heady variety of rhythms and instruments, scrutinising each liquid parcel separately, playing and trialling and erroring and trialling again before becoming assured that everything has fallen in place to create the best wine possible – one strumming the right riffs, blowing rock-solid horns and allowing a heady whack of precision percussion sections to carry it all forward. Expressing the heart and the mind through those good grapey stuff provided by earth and nature and weather and sun.

It tastes pretty good, too. Le Chant Rouge 2020 is driven by the tight partnership of Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon, these two comprising the back-bone of the blend. It’s red fruit and brightness, with Cabernet Sauvignon providing muscle and an attention-grabbing density on the mid-palate. The wine swings off from the Bordeaux red rhythm with a juicy, ringing hit from Sangiovese which adds a layered edge of spring and light to the wine. This all before the Shiraz kicks in, adding a really cool, satisfying edge of savoury, fynbos and silky Ribena reams to round of the wine. It’s rock solid, and it is complete. If you want to compare it to a tune, try the mix of classic musicality, pleasure and pure class in the song “Kid Charlemagne” as performed by the master band that is Steely Dan. Worth checking out here.

Just by chance you crossed the diamond with the pearl
You turned it on the world
That’s when you turned the world around…..