Rhone Valley - South
Clos des Grillons - New
Rochfort du Gard
WineNicolas Renaud is a talented winemaker introduced to me by Eric Pfifferling of Domaine L'Anglore. Recommendations don't get any better than that!
He works from his home with his small meticulous winery and barrel store located in his extended garage and his methods are similar to those employed at our other Rhone Valley estates whereby freshness, fruit and vibrancy is prized over sheer concentration and heroics.
Nicolas used to be a history teacher at the local university until his passion for wine saw him rent a very old parcel of vines (17ha) near Rochfort du Gard, to the East of Tavel and in AOC Côtes du Rhône. Clos des Grillons was established in 2007.
Wine
His style is unsurprisingly like that of his friend Eric Pfifferling with perhaps more bass. All the wines are perfumed, lively, elegant and extremely vibrant, in short - bursting with personality, vitality and life.
These are brilliant wines and I suggest that if they sound appealing to you that you don't hesitate as this estate is just about to hit prime time - cult Parisian restaurant "Le Baratin" was due to get their first order the week following my visit.
Domaine Gramenon
Côtes du Rhône
Background
Located not far from the village of Vinsobres Michele Laurent makes some of the most beautiful and compelling Rhone wines today. There are two things that set this fabled domaine apart from the rest. Firstly, Gramenon's vineyards are at the far northern end of the Southern Rhône region giving fresh flavours and acidity combined with fragrant aromas in a region not known for it. Secondly, Gramenon is a little unusual, in that it makes very high-end wines from vineyards that bear no more than the humble appellation of Côtes du Rhône.
The domaine was set up by Phillipe and Michelle Aubery-Laurent in 1990 and quickly made a reputation for its concentrated, complex wines made from very ripe grapes, which come mainly from old vines. Phillipe died in a hunting accident in 1999, but Michelle has continued with the domaine, nowadays working with their son Maxime-Francois, whose excellent (and slightly deeper) wines I have imported too. Please enquire about them.
Made with gloriously ripe fruit and bottled by hand without fining or filtration, many of the cuvees are also bottled without the addition of any sulphur in order to keep the yeasts and microflora alive. This is non-interventionist, minimalist wine-making par excellence. Not only are the vines old (there is one parcel of 110-year-old Grenache) but the traditional cellars contain no high-tech equipment with the wine descending by means of gravity to the tanks (to use a pump apparently stresses the yeasts) and the ageing of all the cuvees of red wines is only in old casks and demi-muids.
Le Gramenon is the eponymous Cotes du Rhone; it's lush and fruity, but delicate and fine too. It almost has a cool edge to it and you will find that bottle after bottle of it can dissapear very quickly....Sierra du Sud, named after the ancient Syrah clone, is indeed 100% pure Syrah. Amidst the power is delightful delicacy: cassis mingled with tapenade, Provencal herbs, minerals and flowers. La Sagesse is 100% Grenache, an expansive, intensely fragrant Cotes du Rhone with a chewy texture and lush, layered flavour. Ceps Centenaire is a real rarity from the oldest vines and is one of the great wines of the Rhone. It is a plush, sumptuous mouthful, bursting with bright kirsch-laden fruit. To taste these wines; wines of natural grace, perfume and subtle depth, you have to look into yourself as well as into the glass. These are living, mutable wines constantly confounding expectation; sometimes shy, austere, fugitive, sometimes lush, floral and bold.
Wine
You can go out and spend $100 or $200 per bottle and not find the pleasure of the wines that you will enjoy here. Pure, juicy and fresh fruit élevaged in wood but not woody, full-bodied but not dense, intense but not cumbersome and so flavourful...then comes the exquisite aftertaste, with its enviable silken texture...
Domaine l’Anglore
Tavel
BackgroundEric Pfifferling created the Domaine de l’Anglore in 1988, his ancient vines are located near the village of Tavel. Eric farms his 7 hectares of gallet-strewn organic vineyards, hand-harvests his own grapes and avoids all shortcuts such as artificial yeasts, enzymes and adding sulphur in the winery after the harvest. His strict sanitation and attention to detail in the vineyard and winery enables him to craft stunning, fragrant reds and whites. His work is a testament to his abilities and intuition and offer an exacting demonstration of how organic farming methods and natural winemaking are revolutionizing winemaking in the southern Rhône valley. An impassioned crusader against the ‘industrialization’ of wine, Eric creates a variety of wines year in and out that are full of freshness and charm; he has a serious following.
The quality of Eric’s wines once tasted is quite apparent. You need only put your nose in your glass to be taken into his world, heightened by his wines incredible aromas and textures - swallow the first mouthful and your senses will yearn for the next.
An impassioned and well travelled man, Eric loves to talk about all things besides wine but when the subject is inevitably raised, he becomes very animated and when he opens up, it is with his delight to have discovered the organic, natural principles and methods that he shares with his many colleagues throughout France who are equally as passionate; you sense a certain freedom and energy in what he says—and a lot of good sense.
Another important observation is his intense preoccupation with each minute detail of his wines: they are ornate with detail. Intuitively, he tastes and re-tastes them to continually improve on them, thus each harvest he brings new insight, knowledge and thoughts. Eric is anything but formulaic, a virtue that can cost his wines the appellation on occasion; when this occurs he bottles under vin de table.
Above all, he listens more than he speaks. Old vignerons and vine growers are those that he most admires; each meeting nourishes him and pushes him towards new adventures. Lucky for us....
WineAt l’Anglore the wines are seductive and charming. The unfiltered Tavel Rosés are sensual, potent and riveting. Amongst the numerous other wines on offer, I have chosen Pierres Chaudes (the Hot Stones) which this year is AC Côtes du Rhône. Expect a faint haze in all the wines as they are unfiltered and they will benefit greatly from a decant before service. Natural wines like these have not been in Australia before and require extra care and attention with storage and service.
La Ferme Saint Martin
Beaumes de Venise & Côtes du Ventoux
Background
If there is a prettier vineyard in this part of France then I would like to see it. La Ferme St Martin is serene with sweeping views of the Mont Ventoux and the Dentils de Montmirail. It’s a long winding road up there and not easy to find but if I were a vine, I think I would feel very lucky to be planted here and not just because this domaine is currently one of the ’it’ properties in the Rhône Valley but because it is particularly well known for it’s exemplary biodynamic viticulture as well as it’s outstanding wines.
The domaine itself was bought buy Guy’s father in 1955 and the cellar established in 1963. There are 22 hectares on various terraces at altitudes between 200 and 600 meters. 15ha are in Beaumes de Venise, 5ha in Cotes de Ventoux and 2 in Cotes du Rhône. Guy Jullien’s vineyards lie within both the Beaumes de Venise and the Côtes de Ventoux appellations. A passionate crusader for wines to be produced as naturally as possible he is one of the most respected vignerons in his region.
At Ferme St Martin there is a reason why the wines are so good. The vineyards are all plowed and no synthetic substances are used - all the work done in the vineyard is done in order to produce healthy grapes whilst retaining the life of the soil and balance in nature that surrounds them, particularly the flora and fauna that surrounds the vine.After an initial sorting in the vineyard, the grapes undergo a second sorting in the winery with the belief that the quality of the grapes directly determines the quality of the wine. All this care and effort and look at the prices!
Wine
The wines here are all very intense, in colour, flavour and concentration; due in no small part to the small yields and exemplary viticulture at this estate. Guy is interested in making his wine as naturally as possible, but adds a little sulphur at bottling to stabilise the wines. The grapes are de-stemmed here and I would describe the wines as sophisticated and serious, brooding and impeccably well made. The concentration here is admirable.
Domaine La Roche Bussière
Côtes du Rhône
Background
Domaine La Roche Buissière is a young and dynamic setup run by Laurence and Antoine Joly along with Antoine’s father Pierre. Pierre Joly had farmed the family vines organically since 1982 but, like most others at the time, sold all of his grapes to the local Co-op. In 1999, on returning from his studies at the Beaune Oenology school, Antoine convinced his father to let him vinify the family grapes and sell and market the resultant wine. To do this it was necessary to set up a new winery, an artisanal and stripped back setup, which was done in time for the 2000 harvest and, voila! La Roche Buissière was born.
The winery is located in Fauçon which is in the cooler Northern area of the Côtes du Rhône and their vines are all planted close by, generally on terraced vineyards at about 350-500 meters in altitude. As it is very cool in this area (the harvest here is 5 days after nearby Cairanne) which is very close to the 2000m Mt. Ventoux the wines have clarity of aroma and fineness of flavour when compared with the broader and sometimes jammy characters that one generally finds in wines produced from and around the expansive flat area called the Plan de Dieu—the generic and general source of most Côtes du Rhône wine.
Everything here is done classically and like other producers in this portfolio the emphasis is on letting nature take it’s course and intervening as little as possible during vinification and élevage. These are delicious, but sturdy and rugged wines that are simply great fun to drink; these wines have personality and character in spades!
WineQuality in the vineyards here is paramount: low yields are encouraged by growing grasses between vine rows, pruning is radical and leaves are plucked in summer to let the sun shine through. In the winery, grapes are crushed into large concrete tanks where they ferment with natural yeast and are racked off malolactic lees into cuve where the wine rests until bottling without fining or filtration; the total sulphur in the wines at bottling is only 15mg/litre. Making wines like this makes them taste quite apart from the average Côtes du Rhône and as such they have lost the right to use the appellation in some years and bottle under Vin de Table.
As with other producers listed here, this is not a problem within France where, in the hippest restaurants and most popular bars up to a third of the wine list can be made up of Vin de Table, some of them more expensive than those that are AOC. This is surely a sign that French vignerons are tiring of their demanding regulations and increasingly making wines that flaunt the rules - a bit like Italy’s Vino da Tavola phenomenon of the 1980s.
Domaine de Ferrand
Châteauneuf du Pâpe
Background
Philippe Bravay is now in charge of the family domaine and, to quote the recent article in Wine Spectator where his 2005 Châteauneuf du Pape was the top rated wine, he is “now in a groove here”. He is extremely dedicated to preserving the unique traditions that Châteauneuf du Pâpe brings to the wine world although only a few will ever get to enjoy his wines as the domaine is tiny (only 5 ½ hectares of which over half is on vines approaching 100 years old) all situated in the lieu-dit Ferrand. He uses organic growing techniques and limits yields severely (his Côtes du Rhône yields less than 2 tonnes to the acre, and the Châteauneuf du Pâpe much less) vinification is traditional: open top fermenters, basket presses, and cement cuves.
The Côtes du Rhône vines were planted between 1933 and 1946, and consist of 80% Grenache, 15% Syrah and 5% Cinsault. It is quite unbelievable just how good these are. Having tasted at quite a few leading Châteauneuf du Pâpe properties on this trip I would have liked to have a glass of Philippe's Côtes du Rhône next to me as a marker!
The Châteauneuf du Pape is 90% Grenache, the vines ranging in age from 60 to 100 years of age, and the balance the other twelve Châteauneuf varietals. From these he obtains superb natural ripeness, usually in excess of 14%. His methods are classic and the aging is for the most part in large oak foudre, but also a small portion in old barriques, however no new oak. The reds here start off life dark fruited, juicy and succulent and will close up after 5 years before opening again to evolve into penetrating and exotic flavours of kirsch, ash, sandalwood, leather and spice; always big wines, they are the very image of their landscape—hillsides of mistral battered vines growing between sun bleached stones the size of your fist.
Wine
This is a very traditional estate, classic methods and approach to vinification means the wines have great structure and due to the small yields in the vineyards, amazing concentration. These are benchmark wines that will repay carful cellaring. I will never be able to purchase much as it seems that the rest of the world has also caught up to Philippe's progress; when I asked him if I could buy a bottle of 2005 Châteauneuf du Pâpe to take with me back to Australia, he winced and replied that he only had seven left...it was then that I realised that he had opened a bottle for me to taste only minutes earlier....
Les Vignerons d'Estezargues
Côtes du Rhône and Côtes du Rhône-Villages
Les Vignerons D'Estezargues is a Southern Rhone Co-operative created in 1965 located in the Gard Departement, west of Villeneuve-Les-Avignon. In a region (including the whole of southern France) where every village has its cooperative, this one took a lone path a few years ago when they chose to vinify individual and exceptional batches and make single cuvées with the best plots of its ten vigneron/members. The only requirement of the Co-operative is that the members farm organically without pesticides, herbicides and other chemical junk so their wines can be made as naturally as possible using the grapes own yeasts.
The Co-op underwent it's most significant qualitative improvements under the watch of Jean-Francois Nicq, who began to work there in 1989 and developed a idea that all vineyards and batches would be made and bottled separately; this was successfully put in place in 1995 after all the vignerons were convinced by itís merits. This important change meant rapid success - initially in all the leading wine bars and restaurants throughout France (but especially Paris) and now in export markets where the wines are very eagerly sought out.
In 1998, he added a natural wine approach which was even more daring for a Co-op. Essentially he would be working his members 420 acres of vines and the resultant wines in the same manner as a small high quality natural vigneron would theirs.
Denis Deschamps is the winemaker now in charge, he began to work at Estezargues in 2002, and continues to work naturally: No external yeasts, no filtration, no fining, no enzymes, no SO2 on the grapes at harvest (or during the vinification) and only a little bit added at bottling. He is a passionate and highly talented man and the wines are now perhaps the best they have ever been.
For the wine making, the destemmed grapes are lightly crushed, then stay in vats for maceration and fermentation for 3-4 weeks at a low temperature (20∞C). One pump over per day is all that is done during fermentation as they don't look for harsh tannins, indeed all the wines show fine aromas and silky textures. The wines are made with the free run juice only and the wines get to rest in tank during the winter months, without any SO2 additions or fining. This is a remarkable operation when you consider the scale.
This is an exceptional source of Southern Rhone wines; they have all the attractive appeal of the very top natural Rhone winemakers at very generous prices...
Provence