From Provence with Love

The road less travelled doesn’t necessarily have to be a road.

Sometimes it has twin Thornycroft diesels, more than 400 horsepower and a rather determined ability to rearrange anything that hasn’t been properly secured.

We discovered this recently aboard a 1964 Fairey Huntsman 28, cruising around the Isle of Wight with Argonaut Rosé on board and the optimistic thought that at some point we might actually be able to pour it!

The Huntsman is over sixty years old, although you wouldn’t necessarily know it from the way it moves through the water. This particular boat came second in the Cowes to Torquay powerboat race in 1964, an era when offshore racing involved powerful engines, wooden boats and rather more courage than electronics.

Long, low and beautifully purposeful, the Huntsman comes from a time when things were designed primarily to work. The fact that it still looks wonderful six decades later feels almost incidental.

It also has a little cinematic history. The Fairey Huntsman appeared in From Russia with Love, during the film’s famous boat chase.

The road less travelled. By sea.

We’ve always liked taking the less obvious route. It’s how we find many of our wines. A recommendation, a village we hadn’t planned to visit, or a meandering track that makes us wonder what might be at the other end.

This time we were heading for Colwell Bay, on the north-west coast of the Isle of Wight, to meet some of my oldest friends for lunch at The Hut.

Arriving from the water is part of the pleasure. We anchored in the bay and were collected by tender for the short journey ashore. There is something wonderfully civilised about leaving a sixty-year-old powerboat bobbing at anchor while someone comes to collect you for lunch.

Among our friends was one whose family owns part of the Provençal vineyard where Argonaut is made.

Suddenly, the wine travelling with us had completed a rather satisfying circle.

From Provence to Colwell Bay

Argonaut begins its journey hundreds of miles away, down another road less travelled near Puget-Ville in Provence.

There, at a small organic estate beneath the Maures mountains, the grapes are picked in the cool of the night and early morning, before the hot Provençal sun reaches the vines. They are gently pressed and vinified at low temperatures, preserving the freshness and delicate fruit that first made us want to bring the wine home.

Now one of those bottles was sitting beside the sea at Colwell Bay, shared before lunch with someone connected to the land where the grapes had grown.

Wine has a rather lovely ability to connect people and places like that.

The name seemed appropriate too. The original Argonauts set sail aboard the Argo in search of the Golden Fleece. Our Argonaut had made a slightly less heroic journey from Provence to the Isle of Wight, but travel, discovery and good company were involved in both.

A minor problem with 400 horsepower

There was just one practical consideration.

Argonaut likes to be served at around 8°C. Keeping it cold aboard the Huntsman was relatively easy. Keeping it on the little teak table was considerably harder.

Two powerful marine diesels and a lively Solent aren’t natural companions to elegant wine service. The bottle spent rather more time in the ice bucket than on the teak, which was probably best.

Once we found calmer water, however, everything fell into place. Pale Provençal rosé, polished timber, salt air and a sixty-year-old boat carrying us somewhere worth going.

It was difficult to imagine Argonaut anywhere else.

Where will yours go?

We know where every bottle of Argonaut starts its journey. What we rarely know is where it goes next.

That thought inspired our Where will Sirene take you? competition on Instagram.

Take a bottle somewhere worth going, photograph it when you get there and tag @sirenewines. A riverbank, a beach, a garden, a long lunch, or somewhere we haven’t thought of yet. A monthly winner for a free case of our wine will be selected by the Sirene team.

We found Argonaut by taking a detour.

We’d rather like to see where yours takes you.

From Provence with love.