Notes from the Rhȏne River Valley
August 18 – 25, 2024. And now dear readers, for something completely different.
Kim and I have returned from a long-delayed trip to the Rhȏne Valley in France where we ate well, drank well, and gathered-in many memories of Provence and the Northern Rhȏne. Instead of an exhaustive travelogue, let me focus this post on some wine-related observations to give you a sense of this region. During our trip we visited three distinct wine producing areas and one winery in each area.
Southern Rhȏne.
We began in the parched and olive-green hills around Marseilles. Large stone outcrops define ancient river valleys of the southern Rhȏne and sandstone-colored buildings with tile roofs could as easily be in Spain or Italy as in France. In this part of the country, practically all wines are blended with the most common blend being Grenache, Syrah, and Mourvèdre grapes (GSM), although ten other varietals are allowed by law. It is a miracle grapes grow in this area at all because there's not much soil to speak of. The ground is covered in small, rounded stones, called galets, remnants of a glacial time when the river basin was much wider.
These stones absorb and then radiate heat. Like much of France, irrigation is prohibited or strictly regulated here. Another feature is close pruning which keeps the vines under two feet or so in height. The reason for this is the Mistral, the north wind that howls down the valley from the Alps. During our visit, we met the Mistral over several days of constant 30 – 40 mile per hour winds, bowing the trees and churning whitecaps on the river. Winds like this would shred a taller vine, so understandably generations have learned to keep plants close to the ground, appearing like gnarled shrubs.
Our first wine experience was in the oldest appellation in the French classification system: Chateauneuf du Pape. The appellation is named after the Pope’s castle in Avignon where the papacy of the Roman Catholic Church resided for 70 years during the 14th Century. The area back then already had a history of wine production dating to the earliest Greek and Roman visitors. And today, more wine is produced from the Chateauneuf du Pape district than from the rest of the Rhȏne River valley combined, north and south.
We visited Maison Bouachon near the little town of Chateauneuf du Pape. Maison Bouachon was at first a cooperage but has been making wine since 1898. Out of their total production of some 12,500 cases (e.g., Cȏtes du Rhȏne), only around 2,500 cases qualify for the Chateauneuf du Pape label. We sampled the house label “La Tiare du Pape” (The Pope’s Crown) in a 2022 white wine of Grenache Blanc, Clairette and Roussanne and a no-vintage red wine of the GSM blend. The white wine was fresh with a touch of sweetness and green apple from the Clairette. The red wine needed three to four more years of aging to tame the 15% alcohol and assertive tannins. We also sampled the 2020 “Dedication,” which is a Chateauneuf du Pape from 80-to-100 year old vines. You could easily lay this wine down for 20 to 25 years, however, the wine is already more controlled in its tannic grip than the other red we sampled. It is smoother, with some leather. The wine is in the $70.00 range.
Northern Rhȏne.
Two days river travel north from Avignon, we arrived at the town of Toulon on the west/right bank of the Rhȏne, and Tain-l’Hermitage, a commune on the east/left bank. Behind Toulon are the vineyards of the Saint-Joseph appellation which run thirty miles in a narrow sinewy district. The real star in the area, however, is the hill of Hermitage that looms over the little town of Tain-l’Hermitage. Named after a hermit who was granted sanctuary on top of the hill in the 13th Century, and whose chapel is still there, Hermitage is known to produce some of the best wine in the world. (During his tour of France in 1787, Thomas Jefferson noted that the last hermit died in 1751.) Today, most of the hill is owned by one of two producers: M. Chapoutier and Paul Jaboulet. About 250 producers control the rest of the hill and the surrounding bottomland from which Crozes-Hermitage wine is produced.
The vines are carefully arranged on the hillside in single rows with a stake
holding each vine onto slender stone-walled terraces. There is no trellising on this hill; each
vine of Syrah – and its mostly Syrah - is independent, contrasting in their
thin lankiness to the bushy squat vines in the southern Rhȏne. The grapes are allowed to grow taller here
because the hill’s south-facing aspect protects the plants from the
Mistral.
There are no tall deer fences as we have in Virginia to keep out animals because, reportedly, the French don’t have much problem with animal invasions. The exception is wild boar. A simple deer fence would not deter wild boar; they have been known to destroy highway guardrails(!). Only electric fencing will do. Hermitage vineyards may also use drip irrigation.
At the end of our hike, we made a short walk to the Cave de Tain to do a wine tasting. Cave de Tain is a cooperative of over 200 producers covering five of the eight appellations in the northern Rhȏne. All of the fruit is grown within 20 kilometers of the production site in Tain. To give you some context, Chateauneuf du Pape alone has around 8,000 acres, while all of the northern Rhȏne has only 10,900 acres, and only 330 acres of that belongs to Hermitage.
We bought a bottle of 2022 white Crozes-Hermitage for our travelling dinner group. This was 100% Marsanne, fresh, pinappley, and medium-bodied. It went down well with the white wine folks at our evening table. We also bought a bottle of Saint-Joseph 2021 (Heritiers Gambert) for our friends. The wine had raspberry fruit and even some licorice. Even though it could age ten years, it happily disappeared that night. Our last wine was a 2019 Crozes-Hermitage from a single vineyard, Les Hauts du Fief. Very long finish, strong structured, and intense.
Beaujolais.
Going from south to north on the A7 highway, our last wine stop for this adventure was the Beaujolais region and more particularly to the area of Cȏtes de Brouilly. Beaujolais sits between the northern most part of the Rhȏne valley and the southern most reaches of Burgundy. Even though it is part of Burgundy for administrative purposes, a Burgundian might not acknowledge this, perhaps harking back to the edict of 1395 in which the duke of Burgundy banned the “dishonest” Gamay grape from his kingdom. Excluded from the north, Gamay is, in fact, the grape from which the vast majority of Beaujolais red wine is made, but in the future, this may be a problem. Gamay does not do well in hot climates and Beaujolais is experiencing more frequent heat waves. It may be that in 40 years Gamay will have been supplanted by more heat-resistant varietals – certainly the scientists are working on that now.
Our visit was to Chateau des Ravatys in Saint-Lager (Brouilly). In 2020, to help fund its research projects, the Pasteur Institute, which had owned the property since 1937, sold the chateau and grounds to the Lavorel family. This included around 90 acres under vine. The Pasteur Institute used much of the property as test grounds for organic grape farming. From what we could see, the vineyard appeared somewhat overgrown and disheveled, but this is organic farming, we were told. Sheep and pigs do the weeding. (Our guide said that they use a special breed of pig that cannot look up from the ground or be tempted to eat the grapes. Sounds like a myth to me or an object lesson about how we must look beyond ourselves.) The vines are free standing, as we saw in the southern Rhȏne, and pruned low to the ground for heat moderation of the plant.
The soil on the chateau properties is one of the few blue stone soils in Beaujolais. The Cȏte de Brouilly is known for this soil. For production, the grapes are not de-stemmed; whole clusters are used for carbonic maceration which is an older Beaujolais method allowed by exception in Brouilly.
Some of the production at Chateau des Ravatys goes to the famous Beaujolais nouveau, that fruity, short-lived wine that is released each November to much global fanfare. THE place to be for the five-day bacchanal release celebration, called Les Sarmentelles de Beaujeuis, in the historic capital of Beaujolais, the little town of Beaujeu. Get tickets in advance!
Our wine tasting at Chateau des Ravatys included four wines, none of which were Beaujolais nouveau:
2023 Chardonnay. This is a Beaujolais Village which is a step up from more generic Beaujolais. You get some hay and sunny earth on the nose; some honeysuckle sweetness on the palate. We bought three bottles to ship.
2022 Brouilly Cru de Beaujolais. Very popular in Parisian bistros. Garnet in color, dark fruit and complex. Can age 5 – 8 years.
2020 Cȏte de Brouilly. From the foothills of Mont Brouilly, this red had more fruit but could use some aging to get tannins under control. Also called Cuvée Mathilde.
2022 Cȏte de Brouilly Cuvée Reserve. Mild and balanced. An older wine – oaked longer. We bought three bottles to ship.
It was wonderful to be in French wine country, however briefly, to see the products of tradition and technique that originated before Virginia was even thought to exist. I would not want to subject my knees and lower back to hand-harvesting the groundling vines of the southern Rhȏne or Beaujolais. Nor would I want to farm the 30˚ slope of Hermitage, in constant danger of slipping off the mountain on its loose gravely soil. I am truly thankful that others have perfected those processes and today endure the hard work to deliver the unique wines of Provence and Beaujolais.
Shortly, we will return to our usual fare of Virginia wines and wineries with a better appreciation of what we produce here and our potential.
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