Southern Rhône: Not Châteauneuf-du-Pape
Given the southern Rhône contains 66,000ha of plantings, there’s a huge number of appellations producing wine, including red, white, and rosé, fortified wine, and sparkling wine. There are different tiers: Côtes du Rhône for entry-level, good-value wine, Côtes du Rhône-Villages is a step-up, and then the most ageworthy are the crus, or individual appellations. Some producers conform to these appellations, others are more imaginative. My trip to southern Rhône was brief, but here are some of the wine regions I encountered.
the other crus
The 21 villages with Côtes du Rhône-Villages are felt to produce higher quality wine than the large Côtes du Rhône appellation. These villages, scattered around the region, always have the possibility of being raised to cru status: Plan de Dieu is under consideration for example. In 1971, Gigondas was the first to be elevated (for reds only), followed by Vacqueryas in 1990 (for red and a tiny amount of white). More recently, Rasteau (red only) received its cru status in 2010, and Cairanne (for red, white, and rosé) in 2016.
We stopped off at Domaine Brusset in the village of Cairanne. They have expanded through three generations to own 70ha of land in five appellations, which offered the chance to compare some of the different crus of the southern Rhône.
Gigondas was one of the first wines I fell in love with, as a less expensive alternative to Châteauneuf-du-Pape. However, as its quality has been appreciated more and more, the prices are no longer that dissimilar. I’ve also learnt that the style is different from Châteauneuf-du-Pape; coming from the more elevated foothills of Dentelles de Montmirail, the wines are less voluptuous with a firmer tannic structure and more of a meaty, black liquorice character. Blending is also more constricted: the wines have to be a maximum 80% Grenache, in essence what most Châteauneuf-du-Pape is but with less room for manoeuvre. Brusset’s “Les Hauts de Montmirail” 2021 (€29; ✪✪✪✪✪) is a classic, stylish Gigondas: a Grenache, Syrah, Mourvèdre blend from the top of the slope, perfumed, pretty, herbal, intense, and chewy.
There’s a wonderful old-fashioned crunchiness to Rasteau. Vin Doux Naturel is also made around the pretty village, perhaps confirming the old-school nature of the wines: Brusset’s “Le Bastille” 2021 (€17; ✪✪✪✪), a Grenache, Mourvèdre blend, is earthy, rustic, and meaty, with a wild blackberry, bramble fruit profile. Cairanne is lighter on its feet, with a vibrancy and freshness which makes it more suitable for earlier drinking, although “Les Vieilles Vignes” 2022 (€16; ✪✪✪✪), from 90-year-old Grenache and Syrah vines, is ripe, juicy, spicy, and herbal, showing why the village was upgraded to its own cru.
Ventoux
mont ventoux behind old-vine grenache
The heart of the southern Rhône is a relatively flat valley, the gently undulating land very different from the dramatic slopes that rise above the river to the north. This gives the impression that the region is quite uniform, with an unvarying warm climate with few cooling influences. This explains the low training systems of the vines, to help protect them from the sun and the heat during the summer growing season.
However, the southern Rhône produces a variety of styles of wine. In part, that’s because of the number of grape varieties planted, but it’s also because the climate and growing conditions vary. The valley rises into the foothills of the Dentelles de Montmirail, a mountain range which separates the southern Rhône from neighbouring Provence.
wind sock looking over Provence
Right at the bottom of these mountains is the Ventoux appellation, located in the Vaucluse region which is also an IGP. Mont Ventoux is a 1,910m high mountain, at the end of the Dentelles de Montmirail and the highest in the area; its name means “windy,” which gives a clue to the growing conditions. South of the mountain on the border with Provence is the Chêne Bleu winery, some of its wines labelled Ventoux, others Vaucluse IGP. Because of elevation and the winds blowing through, the growing conditions are much cooler, with the harvest three weeks later than the rest of the southern Rhône at the end of September (although, as in many other warm regions, the harvest is getting earlier, two weeks so in hot 2022). Visiting the property at the beginning of July, the difference in temperature was noticeable: as we drove up early in the morning from Orange, a town which is part of the Châteauneuf-du-Pape appellation, temperatures fell from just below 30°C to 23°C at the winery. This naturally changes the growing conditions and the styles of wine: there is still a ripe voluptuousness to them, with a characteristic herbal, garrigue Rhône nature, but with a vibrant freshness. I was fortunate enough when visiting to taste “Abélard” 2007 (€100; ✪✪✪✪✪✪), which is mostly Grenache with a little bit of Syrah. I’ve tasted this vintage many times over the last ten years; it remains remarkably immediate with many years left to develop while maintaining a ripe tannic structure. Being so close to Provence, Chêne Bleu also produce a wonderful rosé (€35; ✪✪✪✪✪) from Grenache Noir and Blanc and Rolle (Vermentino*), which has a structure, concentration, and complexity that makes it particularly ageworthy—but still very fresh for a summer’s afternoon.
Tavel
Tavel is an appellation which has always puzzled me, sometimes seeming to exist to give wine students something else to learn about. It’s a rosé only appellation on the other side of the Rhône from Châteauneuf-du-Pape; the historic rivalry between the two appellations has led to rumours that Châteauneuf-du-Pape took rosé out of its regulations to spite Tavel, and Tavel committed to rosé because of an anti-Châteauneuf-du-Pape chip on its shoulder, showing just how different the wines are despite their proximity.
The wines of Tavel are deep-coloured, and quite unlike Provençal rosé which dominates contemporary styles internationally. There are nine varieties allowed, with Grenache and Cinsault the two most important because of their red fruit aromas and low tannins. Syrah, Mourvèdre, and Carignan add some backbone to the wines, while white grape varieties Bourboulenc, Clairette, and Picquepoul can be used in the blend to add freshness. (There’s also an obscure black variety called Calitor permitted, of which there are just 31ha planted in the whole of France. In Tavel, it cannot be more than 10% of the blend, and the vines must pre-date 1994.)
entrance to Ch. Trinquevedel
It may be the romance of visiting the area, but doing so was the first time I’ve really appreciated the fuller style of Tavel rosé. I visited Château Trinquevedel, mainly because they are imported by Kermit Lynch in California. The property is a rather wild château off a dirt track, with vines and flowers growing all around it. The winery was founded in 1936, the same year that the Tavel appellation was formed, and, into the fourth generation, is still family owned and run: visiting was an authentic trip through the history of Tavel.
There are two rosés. The “standard” Tavel (€14; ✪✪✪✪) is a blend of Grenache, Cinsault, Clairette, Syrah, Mourvèdre, and Bourboulenc—they are one of the few producers to use as many grape varieties. I tried the 2022, which was wonderfully fresh and fruity, with a light tannic structure and a complex herbal character: an excellent example of what Tavel is capable of. “Les Vignes d’Eugène” (€18; ✪✪✪✪✪), named after the winery’s founder, is from old vines which he first planted in the 1930s and not made every year. It’s a blend of Grenache, Clairette, and Syrah, and had a great balance between a concentrated richness and a fresh immediacy. The vintage I tasted was 2020, with the wine aged for a year: not your typical summer rosé but still very approachable, with a versatile Easter/summer/autumn/Thanksgiving/Christmas drinking window.
Besides the blends and the age of the vines, the maceration of the two wines was different. The first is macerated for 24 hours, which gives the wine colour, flavour, and very light tannins. The second is macerated for 48 hours, which gives even more colour and structure to the wine. Most rosé winemakers wouldn’t dare use so much skin contact, as it extracts so much colour and tannin—but Tavel is very much its own thing.
Selling Tavel these days is not easy. Despite the popularity of rosé, the wines of Tavel don’t fit into international trends. For this reason, Château Trinquevedel have an experimental line under the Vin de France label called “Les Valets” (an anagram of Tavel and meaning “jack” in a deck of cards). There’s a white, red, and rosé, and a pét-nat—not something I was expecting to taste while visiting Tavel. It’s made from Bourboulenc and Clairette, and comes from vines planted on the property, making it Tavel but most definitely not Tavel. It’s deliciously fresh, with a crunchy, juicy green apple feel to it. For €12, a perfect wine for the summer heat of the southern Rhône.
This foray into the southern Rhône is just the tip of the iceberg. There are crus well worth exploring, such as Lirac (red and rosé), Beaumes-de-Venise (reds, as well as historic fortified wines), and Vinsobres. There’s also the slightly unusual Luberon, blocked from the rest of the southern Rhône by mountains and leading into Provence. Throughout the southern Rhône, there are different levels of quality, price points, and styles of wines: red, white, rosé, sparkling, and fortified, making it one of the most versatile of French wine regions.
*the Italian authorities have somehow made it impossible for the French (except in Corsica) to label wines as Vermentino; any bottlings must now use the French name, Rolle.
