Full appellation status is probably just a few years away. The wines are broadly similar to Côte-Rôtie in style but maybe riper and more dramatic, the vines, after all, face the evening sun and there is more heat here than in Côte-Rôtie. Many growers are involved here and the results are extremely good. Since the late 1990s, however, there has been a move to reclaim this valuable land for the vine.
These steep vineyards on the left bank close to Vienne were once famous but fell into obscurity after phylloxera wiped them out in the 19th century.
On the other hand, full use is made of the vin de pays (IGP)/vin de France category which allows producers to make slightly simpler wines from young vines or from vines that for one reason or another were not included in any appellation. The appellation Côtes-du-Rhône is rarely seen in the north and may well disappear altogether. Most of the wines are sold by appellation with three being white only, two red only and three others where both red and white can be made. Production here is relatively small, accounting for less than 3% of the total for the Rhône Valley. The wines match the scenery: deeply coloured, fine, spicy reds made from the syrah grape and rich, full-bodied whites made from marsanne and roussanne grapes, or the more aromatic viognier up in Condrieu. The scenery is often dramatic with many of the vineyards perched precariously on the steep valley sides. The NorthĪ narrow, funnel-shaped vineyard extends on both sides of the Rhône from Vienne in the north to Valance in the south. The co-ops vary but remain important and can certainly deliver good wine. Of the négoce houses, there have been some changes but the more prestigious ones, with vineyard holdings of their own, have survived and indeed prospered and remain a good source for wine at all price levels. There are far more growers, making and bottling their own wine and every year more growers are tempted to go it alone. Today the situation is very different from what it was thirty years ago. The co-ops, jealous of the success and prestige of the big négoce houses also started to bottle themselves. With the phenomenal success of Rhône wines came more estate bottling. Even the co-operatives, always strong in the Rhône, tended to sell in bulk to merchants either in the Rhône itself or elsewhere. The north is responsible for the most prestigious wines while the south is most important in terms of volume.īefore 1990, most Rhône wines were sold by négociants like Jaboulet and Chapoutier. The Rhône is divided into two unequal parts, north and south, separated by a twenty mile stretch of rather green country where there are no vines. But like most classification systems, it is not perfect and the name of the producer is just as important. Though created over seventy years ago, when most of the south was planted with olive trees and many northern vineyards semi-abandoned, the appellations do give a clue to what is in the bottle. The Appellation Contrôlée system was created in Châteauneuf-du-Pape to improve quality and guarantee provenance and it was instrumental in getting the Rhône better recognised. For generations Burgundy was made unnaturally full bodied by the addition of some Châteauneuf. Have a look, here below, to the main wine regions of France through our wine maps: Alsace, Beaujolais, Bordeaux, Burgundy, Champagne, Corsica, Jura, Languedoc, Loire, Provence, Rhône, Savoy and the South West of France.There was a long period of relative obscurity when Bordeaux and Burgundy were closer to markets in northern Europe, but canny merchants knew their Rhônes well and a little addition of Hermitage to a Lafite was considered a good thing. Like Spain and Italy, France is rich of a large heritage still omnipresent from its history to its countryside, from its cultural citizenship to its power of influence on the global trends and markets. The culture and the blood of its vineyards feed a magic each year reborn. Today, it offers a great variety of terroirs and climates and as many wines for the modern winelovers.įrance is the reference, the keeper of the old world. Its new strengths like tradewinds blow along its shores and seas. Its spirit would be Burgundy and its eternal terroirs drawn by the monks of another age witnesses, protectors and fathers of what was going to be. France, from the prestigious wines of Bordeaux to the sparkling wines of Champagne through the oceans of vines found in Aquitaine and Languedoc to the string of appellations of the Rhônes Valley rolling down to Provence, is a fruit of both tradition and entrepeneurship.
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