It’s the first #MourvedreMonday of the month, so here’s a roundup of Mourvèdre-related interestingness from the past month: February, the dwarf month. (I wonder if someday, February will be downgraded from full month status to “dwarf”, like poor ole Pluto.)

• The Leon Stolarski Blog stoked my jealousy this month with a post describing a major Domaine Tempier tasting which included 19 bottles, from a couple rosés to 7 vintages of La Cabassaou.
• Compounding the jealousy was @bclittle sharing a pic from a tasting of 7 domestic Mourvèdres including Tablas Creek, Anglim, Broc and Cass.
• At the always-worth-reading Drinkster blog, Philip White recommended two Aussie Mourvèdre/Mataros: Yangarra 2010 Mourvèdre McLaren Vale and Esperanza 2010 Monastrell McLaren Vale. (He also suggests blending the two and calling it “Yangaranza Matourastrell”.) Here’s a taste:

It’s intensely-flavoured, velvety wine, with aromas that subliminally hint at 6B pencils, Parade Gloss boot polish, and freshly-polished horse tack.  Its fruits are somewhere between the rooty-fruity fragrance of borscht – cool beetroot soup with yoghurt – and the meaty twang of blueberry.  Its flavours are somewhere between those fleeting notions, inked with the reek of times and tastes past: it’s nostalgic stuff, with soft tannins that remind me of the grainy images in old movies.  It’s never heavy, jammy, or gloopy. It’s the sort of red I can drink in the morning, without food, just for its powerful memory triggers.  I could have it instead of lunch, or with some, in which instance Wah Hing tea-smoked duck comes immediately to mind.  I could have it in the afternoon, with or without Alison Paxton’s exquisite Kangarilla Creamery goat cheese from next door, and then, come to think of it, I could have it with dinner, with dribbly lamb cutlets and mash.  In other words,  I recommend it.  Trust Unca Phil.

• The Reverse Wine Snob tasted and liked the Tarima 2011 Monastrell, a $5.99 Costco find.
• The March 31, 2013 Wine Spectator failed to call out a single varietal Mourvèdre in it’s annual California Rhone review. The full listing of 600+ wines with scores is available here. The highest scoring varietal Mourvèdre — if you’re into scores, that is — is the Cypher Mourvèdre Paso Robles El Pelon 2009 (90, $55). They made up for mostly snubbing Mourvèdre by running a Domaine Tempier/Bandol feature in the same issue. (I’ll not link to it because it’s behind a paywall.)
• Speaking of Bandol, La Vigne reports that 4 hectares of Bandol AOC vineyard land is threatened by construction of a new stadium (unless my French is even weaker than I thought).

We can’t end on that note, so I’ll have to sneak back into the end of January for this…

• Via Twitter, I found an early contender for Mourvèdre Pairing of the Year, which isn’t even a real thing, but after reading this I just might have to make it a thing.

Wow! just ate a lamb's spinal cord and washed it down with #Bandol @TheMarrowNYC happy BDay to me.

— John-Paul Quattrone (@jaypeeq) January 30, 2013