Adventures on the Wine Route

NOWADAYS, WHEN heading north from Provence, I hear Paul Tardieu’s passionate exclamation, “Once you know Provence, you don’t ever want to leave it. No one ever goes back north, no one!” If over the years I have grown attached to Provence, in terms of wine itself my heart belongs to the great reds of the northern Rhône. The best combine a reminder of the sunny Mediterranean with the more self-conscious, intellectual appeal of the great Burgundies farther north, which is not a bad combination. And these prized wines of the northern Rhône are France’s rarest: Hermitage has 300 acres planted in vines compared to 7,900 at Châteauneuf-du-Pape. Gigondas has 2,600; Cornas, only 130. To bring it into perspective, Vieux Télégraphe, a single domaine at Châteauneuf-du-Pape, has the same surface in vines as all of Cornas. Vieux Télégraphe’s vineyard can be cultivated by tractor despite the stones, whereas at Cornas a tractor would topple sideways down the hillside. Yet Châteauneuf-du-Pape and Cornas sell at about the same price, which explains why so many of the northern Rhône’s best vineyards have been abandoned: they must be worked by hand, and the pay stinks.

By autoroute, Cornas is only one hour from Châteauneuf-du-Pape, but everything changes.

That vast luminous Provençal skyscape is gone, and with it the expansive feeling it engenders.

In the north, you see what spawned the name Côtes du Rhône in the first place, the “hillsides of the Rhône.” Most vineyards have a view down to the river.

The talismanic olive and cypress trees disappear, and though one sees aromatic herbs like rosemary and thyme in the northern Rhône, they do not grow wild but must be cultivated.

Butter and cream replace olive oil in the cuisine of the northern Rhône. Garlic and tomato play a lesser role. This is the midlands, so the fish markets exude a less appetizing odor.

The northerners are supposedly harder workers, and more cerebral. They accuse their neighbors to the south of being lazy and superficial. But the southerners pity the uptight northerners, who are thrashed this way and that by their cold winter wind.

Those stonework walls that define the northern vineyard landscape are not to be found in the southern Côtes du Rhône, although farther south at Bandol the hills are once again adorned with them, so let no one slander the Provençaux for being lazy. The handmade walls transform the landscape to an extent the artist Christo would envy. Painstakingly constructed over the centuries, the dry-stone terraces bear witness to the value the ancients accorded these viticultural sites.

After the dizzying number of appellations in the south, the northern Rhône is easy. There are but a handful, including some of France’s noblest: Saint-Péray, Cornas, Saint-Joseph, Hermitage, Crozes-Hermitage, Condrieu, Château Grillet, and Côte Rôtie. And in contrast to the numerous grape varieties permitted down south, the northern Rhône reds are the result of a single variety, the Syrah. One would think that a blend of grapes could create a more complex range of aromas and flavors than a lone variety, yet the Syrah juice eked out from one of those steep hillsides can produce wines of dazzling complexity, wines whose exotic aromas seem to shimmer and change like the flashes of color gleaming from a jewel.

The first wine village encountered as one enters the northern Rhône produces white wine exclusively. Old wine books mention Saint-Péray’s “taste of violet,” boast that Pliny and Plutarch both regarded it highly enough to single it out in their writings, and that it was a favorite of composer Richard Wagner. What more could you ask?

No one can argue with past appreciations because we cannot taste the Saint-Péray they were obviously enjoying, but in our day and age something has gone haywire. Saint-Péray is full of subterranean cellars. Someone must be making good wine because the ingredients exist: hillside vineyards and the same grape varieties that make white Hermitage. But each time I go to Saint-Péray I am so indifferent to what I am offered that it takes two or three years to overcome the taste memory and convince myself to return and try again. It is useless to discuss whether Saint-Péray has a taste of this or a taste of that. The problem is finding any taste at all. The wines seem to have been concocted by freshman students trying to pass an enology exam in sterilization. A+! No one is going to write a Parsifal with a glass of technological Saint-Péray for inspiration.

As you survey the terraced slopes from below, the boundary between Cornas and Saint-Péray is indiscernible. It is weird, because in terms of what you find in your glass the two are opposites. Unlike its neighbor, Cornas does not produce white wine, but calling Cornas red does not do it justice. Should your pen run dry, fill it with Cornas, but this is not the wine to uncork the evening of the day you paid to have your teeth cleaned. Actually, there are wines as dark and darker, but rarely as remarkably vivid.

Because the vinification has remained old-fashioned, there are several excellent producers at Cornas. For some reason, Invasion of the Enologists has yet to appear at the Cornas cinema. Underground in one of the several cellars it might as well be 1885 or 1785. And with a dense, vibrant Cornas in your glass, you are tasting a wine not unlike what was poured in 1885 or 1785. The curé of the parish wrote in 1763, “The Mountain of this village is nearly all planted in vines which produce a very good black wine which is sought after by the trade because it is so heady [fort capiteux].”

This is Syrah country. Cornas is the first village where the grape shows its true colors, so to speak, and it does not start off timidly. The taste of Cornas is as bold as its appearance. You chew it around in your mouth, and it seems to stain the palate. There is nothing like it.

Why, then, is there so little of the stuff? Why are there only 130 acres planted when there are 1,300 acres of Cornas available for planting? Is there not enough demand worldwide to sop up 1,300 acres of Cornas?

Auguste Clape, the best-known grower in Cornas, regrets that there has never been a négociant of importance with vines at Cornas, someone who understands commerce better than the small local growers, someone who could help the appellation become better known, as Guigal has done for Côte Rôtie. It is a point well taken; after importing Cornas for years, as recently as 1982 I felt obliged to offer an “introductory price” in order to tempt my clients to try Cornas.

Then again I think I would just as soon Cornas stay lost lest the twentieth century take notice and decide to sophisticate this monumental relic. And yet, if it remains unknown, if its price does not soar, the Cornas slopes will not again be covered with vines.

Even if the price becomes more interesting to the growers, replanting the abandoned terraces is not certain. Once untended, oak and pine trees seem to multiply and sprout up like weeds. In order to replant vines, the trees would have to be uprooted, but most of those terraces are too narrow to permit the kind of earthmoving equipment necessary. Manually? Today? Forget it. A recent menace is the appearance of several new homes in the heart of the Cornas appellation. In the old days, the villagers worked the slopes and lived on the plain. Now they want to live on the slopes for the breeze and the view and cultivate the flatlands because it can be done by tractor. But, God help us, the results are not the same, and the difference between the two wines is not subtle. One is Cornas and one is not. Auguste Clape has Syrah growing on both terrains, and he says of his flatland wine, “It makes a decent table wine, but nothing more, and yet it is exactly the same Syrah clone that makes my Cornas. The only difference is the terroir.”

Qualms aside, let us consider how Cornas is drunk, once one has mastered the art of bending one’s elbow and swallowing. In the wine literature, it is repeatedly advised that Cornas must be aged several years before it is worthwhile, but there is something about a brand-new Cornas that should not be missed. Muhammad Ali may have grown more savvy as he matured, but who can forget the young Ali, that dazzle and explosiveness? A bottle should be uncorked when it appears on the market, in order to experience its youthful extravagance of color and size. But then Cornas shuts down for three or four years, after which its aromas begin to develop. For some reason, a perfect Cornas is never as aromatic as a perfect Hermitage or Côte Rôtie. When asked how else Cornas differs from Hermitage, Auguste Clape answered with a trace of a smile that Cornas is more rustre (loutish or brutish), while his friend up the road, Gérard Chave, who makes Hermitage, used the polite word rustique (rustic).

Clape advised following Hermitage with Cornas at table. “I have often been to meals where the order was Saint-Joseph, Côte Rôtie, Hermitage, then Cornas. When we tried the reverse, Cornas followed by Hermitage, the Hermitage did not stand up well. A rustic wine,” he concluded, “will overwhelm a finer wine.”

Yes, normally when several wines are served, the progression is from light to heavy, following the theory that a heavyweight will knock a lightweight out of the ring. By the same token, the progression should go from simple to complex, from rustic to aristocratic, from young to old, the guiding principle being: one’s judgment is going to be influenced by whatever went before. The question is of some import because you do not want to diminish your appreciation of a perfectly good wine by serving it inappropriately. Hermitage is no lightweight, but we do not want it to seem so in the rough, tannic presence of a Cornas; a lighter wine following a heavier wine can actually seem thin. Likewise, a perfectly lovely country quaffer served after a noble growth might seem ignoble, or a young wine raw after a mellow old bottle. Cornas after Hermitage? To me, there is something jarring about the notion. Might not the Cornas seem rustre rather than rustique?

The dilemma helps bring into definition the difference between these two great Syrahs. A proper Hermitage will have a stronger, more eloquent bouquet. It is more distinguished, more the aristocrat. It sings like a chorus of several parts. Cornas sings great bass.

The solution is to give some attention to the vintages chosen, once it has been decided to serve Cornas and Hermitage at the same meal. I would refrain from serving the two at the same stage of maturity. Cornas 1980 could lead into Hermitage 1971, or Cornas 1976 into Hermitage 1966, and so on. A progression toward the older, more aristocratic bottle is a safe guideline to follow, but improvisations are not forbidden. An old Hermitage with roast bird could be followed by a purplish blast of young Cornas with cheese to wake up your party.

Saint-Joseph rouge possesses neither the dimensions of a great Hermitage nor the substantiveness (there is a lot of there there) of Cornas. Consequently, it is not respected to the same degree. But in reality Saint-Joseph is not a substitute that fails to measure up. Here Syrah can be enjoyed in another role. When in doubt about anything, it can be helpful to turn to Mozart, who in Don Giovanni provides an analogy: Zerlina (Saint-Joseph) may not match the emotional dimensions of Donna Elvira (Hermitage), nor is she as “heavy” as Donna Anna (Cornas), but Don Giovanni certainly finds Zerlina’s “farmer’s daughter” seductiveness distracting enough. Then Zerlina sings a playfully erotic song of comfort to her poor, bruised fiancé, Masetto. No self-respecting music critic would start throwing rotten eggs merely because her song lacks the emotional extremes of Donna Elvira’s passionate outbursts, but I believe today’s wine critics would. For them, big means good, light means less good; serious means good, playful is less good. What a humorless way to look at things. Which deity handed down the law that serious, heavy wines are better than gay, playful wines? It certainly was not Bacchus. Was it America’s Puritan God, who refuses to accept that wine can be pure unadulterated fun? When ranking Syrahs, the critics want us to believe that you can apply the same standard to all of them, as if when you uncork a bottle of Syrah you are always looking for the same qualities. The truth is, if a perfect Hermitage deserves an A+, or 20 points, or 100, or five stars, so does a perfect Saint-Joseph. Perfection is perfection, even if the wines taste different. Thank God they taste different! One of the miracles of French wine, one reason it is so endlessly enchanting, is its diversity, even within the same region employing the same grape variety. Rather than belittling it, exalt Saint-Joseph for being different. Here one can breathe in that wonderful, wild, hillside Syrah aroma without waiting years for the wine to soften or open up. And Saint-Joseph rouge is the one Syrah that might even be placed in an ice bucket on a summer day and served cooled down a bit with lunch, outdoors.

The white wine from Saint-Joseph is not easy to obtain because little is produced. It is a white that must be aged in wood in order to be worthwhile. In stainless-steel tanks, which have all but taken over in the cellars, the wine’s wonderful pit-fruit flavors do not develop. It remains closed and unpleasantly aggressive on the palate. But if it is vinified in used oak and if it has not been emasculated by efforts to clean it up or stabilize it, Saint-Joseph blanc can be a gorgeous, expressive dry white that ages well. A 1972 tasted in 1985 had a quincelike aroma, a chalky edge on the palate, and a fleeting suggestion of apricot skin in the aftertaste.

Originally, Saint-Joseph referred to a single hillside between Mauves and Tournon which is now the property of the Chapoutier family. Then the name Saint-Joseph began to be applied to the wines from the series of terraced slopes between Châteaubourg and Vion, which included the exceptional vineyards of Mauves, Tournon, and Saint-Jean-de-Muzols, whose wines had once been marketed under their own names, such as vin de Mauves and vin de Tournon. In those days, prices varied from parcel to parcel even within the same village because the ancients knew the lay of the land and the quality of the juice it gave.

And what of Saint-Joseph today? How did it grow from 240 acres in 1970 to over 700 today? Why, when the quantity produced is increasing, is Saint-Joseph an appellation in decline? The answer is to be found on the abandoned hillsides, grown over with weeds and straggly remnants of vines.

The French wine bureaucrats of the INAO (Institut National des Appellations d’Origine) enlarged and redefined Saint-Joseph, lumping together practically everything on the west bank of the Rhône from Cornas to Ampuis, approximately forty miles, including flatland soil along the riverbanks that had never been planted with grapes. They allow bottles of this stuff to sashay out onto the marketplace decked out in a Saint-Joseph label. Never mind the consumer or truth-in-labeling. Never mind some possible twinge of responsibility to our predecessors who labored to carve those steep hillsides into a shape hospitable to the vine, who left behind thousands of miles of hand-built stone walls because the wine was finer from up there. Nothing is sacred to these officials of the INAO who continue to devalue these historic sites even though they were hired to protect them.

Think about it. Côte means “slope,” or “hillside.” Rôtie means “roasted.” Today, wine from the flat plateau above the “roasted slope” can legally call itself Côte Rôtie.

CELLAR IN THE NORTHERN RHÔNE

In Celtic, Cornas meant “roasted slope.” Now the INAO is considering allowing the plateau above Cornas to be planted in vines whose wine will be sold wearing a Cornas label. Welcome to our brave new world of French wine in which there may be no côte in your Côte Rôtie and no cornas in your Cornas.

When I praised the wine of Saint-Joseph, I did not mean the ordinary wine whose grapes were mechanically harvested on flat terrain thirty miles from the original Saint-Joseph hillside.

But let them plant the plateaus, the hollows and sinks, let them grow grapes in their belly button if they want to, laissez-faire, but do not call it Côte Rôtie, Saint-Joseph, or Cornas.

The French are capable of such noblesse. At its inception, the system of appellation contrôlée was elaborated with admirable rigor. Here was a noble idea. But when they set their minds to it the French can outwhore anybody. Imagine someone trying to convince you that red is green, or a square, round. The current bunch in control of the INAO would have us accept the notion that a slope is flat. This is more than preposterous, it is legalized fraud.

* * *

Crozes-HERMITAGE? Here we go again. Hermitage is that one majestic hillside tilted south like a solar receptor. If there is any single vineyard that the Creator obviously designed expressly for wine production, it is Hermitage.

I suppose someone might be inspired to try a Musigny after tasting a good Chambolle, or a Montrachet because of a good Puligny, but would sampling a bottle of Crozes-Hermitage motivate anyone to try an Hermitage? It is as likely as Muzak leading someone to Bach.

Crozes-Hermitage is by far the largest appellation in the northern Rhône. It includes terrain that does not even deserve to be called Côtes du Rhône. Where’s the côte? Since the appellation was redrawn and expanded to include sandy flatland soils, that is where most of the growers have moved because they can attack with tractors and harvesting machines and because the yield per acre is so much higher. Profit! Facility! The best of all possible worlds!

In other words, by changing the legislation the INAO has, purposefully or not, encouraged the growers to abandon the sites that give the best wine.

The grape variety at Crozes, at least, remains the same as at Hermitage. However, Syrah without a hillside is like Saint George without a dragon: boring.

In reality, Crozes is a sleepy village just behind the Hermitage crest. There are vineyards near Crozes, above the Rhône at Gervans, for example, which provide an environment for the vine similar to that at Hermitage. In olden days the wines from certain of these sites even commanded the price of the lower parcels at Hermitage, and their wine can indeed be reminiscent of Hermitage, thus the reason for coupling Crozes to Hermitage in the first place.

The best parcels of Crozes, of Saint-Joseph, Cornas, and Côte Rôtie include some of the world’s finest vineyards, yet many of them lie fallow. It is a twentieth-century failure. Two thousand years ago, a Roman chronicler observed that the slopes on both sides of the Rhône were covered with vines! One way to encourage replanting these historic sites would be to permit certain wines to have more specific information on their labels. As a wine buyer, you should have the right to know whether your Saint-Joseph comes from one of the great hillside sites or from a flat one. The INAO should permit growers to specify: Saint-Joseph, vin de Tournon or vin de Mauves, or Crozes-Hermitage, vin de Gervans or vin de Mercurol, for example. As time passes and the consumer begins to distinguish and judge the different qualities, the price of the wines produced from the best sites would rise (just as in Burgundy a Pommard “Rugiens” is pricier than a Pommard), perhaps making the tremendous task of replanting the hillsides a profitable venture.

* * *

Once upon a time I imported a vin de Gervans from a producer whose vines were well situated. His soil was granitic; his exposition was almost as south-facing as l’Hermitage; he had the old Syrah, not one of today’s superproducer clones; and his vinification was traditional.

I purchased 1970, 1973, 1974, and 1976. His red lacked elegance and so did he, but it was always a big wine, stuffed full of Syrah flavor. And he was a big-boned Porthos-like figure with a red bulbous nose. An ordinary wineglass looked like a thimble in his hands.

The first danger sign that my Crozes source might be drying up appeared in 1977. There was a disturbing lack of consistency from cask to cask. One exploded with wild raspberry, the next approached vinegar, the next was beginning to oxidize. He downed his glass of each, nonetheless. Then he uncorked a 1970 and filled our glasses to the brim. Well, it is difficult to smell well when your glass is too full to swirl, but one whiff was all that was necessary to see that we had a corked bottle. It happens. There will be an occasional off bottle no matter how expensive the wine or how fancy the label. You pour it down the drain and fetch another. But he seemed not to notice, and he drained his glass in one go.

The next time I drove up the hill, his wife came out to meet me. Her nose had the same colorful glow as her husband’s. When I asked how things were going, she moaned, “We don’t have enough wine to satisfy the demand.” Then she added brightly, “We’re getting twenty-two francs per bottle now.” That was not far from the price of Hermitage itself! Madame was re-creating a scene French wine families must be taught in school: tell your buyer he will be lucky to get any wine at all, and should he be so lucky he will pay dearly for the honor.

Her husband hulked through the doorway. He had a faraway look in his eye, which suggested that he had been a trifle too attentive to his wine’s evolution, and evidently he had had his fill, because instead of taking me directly to the cellar for business as usual, he led me to his garage, which he opened with one of those electronic gadgets. Inside, there was a spanking new car. He invited me to seat myself in front of its majestic dashboard. For the next twenty minutes I sat there watching him demonstrate accessories. Things glowed and twinkled. The windshield wipers click-clacked. Water sprayed. The seat retreated, advanced, and tilted with a purring vibration. The air conditioner exhaled. The roof slid open. Finally he shifted into reverse, gunned it, and backed out a few yards, then he nosed it back into the garage. I glanced over at the odometer: eighteen kilometers. I asked when he had purchased it. “Six months ago,” he answered, which meant a drive up the hill from the dealer, and an in-and-out-of-the-garage every day for six months.

I miss the great Crozes that he used to make. It is as if a chapter were missing from my favorite book. I have never been back. Years later I noticed his Crozes blanc on a restaurant list and ordered it with hope and curiosity. It was not blanc at all, however, but brown, oxidized, and undrinkable.

* * *

When asked what people should know about Hermitage itself, winemaker Gérard Chave replied, “When people think of the Côtes du Rhône, they always imagine huge domaines. They should know that the surface area of the Hermitage vineyard totals only three hundred acres. It is tiny, even smaller than Côte Rôtie or Saint-Joseph. And it should also be known that the area planted in vines has remained the same for centuries. An appellation that has not been altered is an extremely rare thing, especially in the Rhône.”

Gérard Chave’s Hermitage appears under his father’s label, Jean-Louis Chave. The label will once again be perfectly appropriate when Gérard’s son Jean-Louis takes over, continuing a succession of winegrowing Chaves which began in 1481! The family still possesses the original document showing that a property was given to Charles Chave by the Seigneur d’Yserand in return for an unstated service rendered. That property, however, was not at Hermitage itself. Vineyards at Hermitage were acquired much more recently, in 1890.

Some might think the métier would grow a little stale after five hundred years, but no, you could not design a better, more enthusiastic Chave than Gérard. During the centuries there must have been several flowerings of talent in this winegrowing family, but it would be difficult to surpass the impact Gérard has had. Guigal, the négociant at Ampuis, has also had a tremendous influence on the Rhône market. Chave’s impact has been less flamboyant, less commercial than Guigal’s, very much like the difference between their wines. There is a moral force behind Gérard Chave’s respect for tradition and tireless search for quality. Here is a man who comprehends the heritage left behind in those mountainsides, one after another along the Rhône River, carved and sculpted and planted over the centuries in order to produce an annual flowering and fruition and finally a thing of liquid beauty. Chave is capable of communicating the responsibility that heritage imposes, and he does it not like a preacher handing down commandments but with a questioning mind, the smile of a man who loves a good joke, and a contagious joie de vivre. On top of all that, it is not easy to name a finer winemaker. Whatever qualities we might include in a listing of what makes a wine great, they all seem present at once in a glass of Chave Hermitage.

The Chave winery is a few miles from Hermitage in cellars under their home in Mauves, a thin strip of a town that supports itself growing fruit and making wine. Nowhere in Mauves is there evidence of the French flair for storefronts, or any outward flair at all for that matter.

Main Street is the Route Nationale 6, pinched in size by the buildings of the village, which, according to old postcard photos, were constructed with narrower horse-drawn vehicles in mind. This circumstance does not slow down the lead-footed French truck drivers who blast past, full throttle, an arm’s length from where I must stand waiting for a Chave to answer the doorbell. The diesel fumes are trapped between the buildings on each side of the highway, coloring Mauves not mauve but a charmless sooty gray.

All is instantly forgotten when Gérard Chave appears in the doorway with a bright smile. He is a good-looking man in his early fifties, a cross between Gene Kelly and Buster Keaton, with candid, friendly eyes and a nose designed for wine sniffing. Often he greets me with his glass thief in hand, and before I can even pay respects to his wife, Monique, we are descending into the cellar. Suddenly I stand with a glass of the current white Hermitage vintage in hand and I am gazing into one of wine’s most magical colors. It is golden, with much nuance, from glints of green and straw yellow to just a suspicion of something like peach skin. Even if we start tasting at nine in the morning, it always looks good enough to drink, but that first taste is only the downbeat of a lengthy set of variations to follow, so spitting is mandatory if I want to make it back up the steep dirt path out of the cellar.

One taste of white is drawn from a glass-lined tank, another from a large chestnut oval, another from an oak barrel gray with age. One was fermented in new limousin oak, the next in vosges from Alsace. There is also an experimental batch to taste and compare, some new technique that Gérard had heard about and wanted to try in order to see the results for himself.

Here is a place to study the influence of wood on white Hermitage. I always voice my alarm at the success the négociant Guigal enjoyed with one batch of Hermitage blanc because I am terrified Chave might be tempted to follow the current new oak fad. Guigal’s bottling inspired a French journalist to write, “It is the best white Rhône I have ever tasted, and a lesson in vinification for the other winemakers of the Rhône.” Guigal wines do seem to drive wine writers to daffy extremes. The irony is, according to the story I heard in a cellar in Tain l’Hermitage, the white Hermitage in question was purchased, not vinified, by Guigal. The actual producer sold it off in barrel as a failed cuvée because it was so oaky. I had the chance to taste it. It showed no Hermitage character. It had one smell: new oak. It is a dull, monotonous odor, but it is amazing how many tasters fall for it. I say if you are going to pay the price for an Hermitage it might as well smell like Hermitage. Chave uses new oak as a seasoning whose presence is one of the many facets in the aroma of his bottled wine. He likes the analogy of a chef using salt in the kitchen: a little can improve a dish, but too much covers up all the other flavors.

On the other hand, there are Hermitage growers who have begun bottling their white without any wood aging at all, and some now prevent their white Hermitage from undergoing its malolactic fermentation, which necessitates a supertight filtration and a good dose of SO2 lest the wine follow its natural inclination and burst into a stinky, bubbly “malo” after it is bottled.

“Such wines,” Chave says, “are not bad, but they are not in the style of the classic Hermitage. Vinification in wood,” he says, “allows a better development of the aromas because there is a phenomenon of osmosis in the wood that you don’t have in glass or metal. In stainless steel, the wine remains more anonymous. It does not reflect the originality of the appellation, by which I mean those characteristics that make Hermitage Hermitage. The definition of Hermitage’s character does not date from yesterday. Winemaking methods that have been employed over the decades also contribute to a wine’s identity. Here is where the rules of the INAO are altogether incomplete. The INAO regulates the grape varieties, the number of buds to leave on each branch, the form of the pruning, all sorts of things, but on the subject of making the wine, they say nothing. You can do whatever you like. If I decide tomorrow to make my red Hermitage by carbonic maceration, no one can tell me I don’t have the right. It would still be considered Hermitage.”

The multiple cuvées of his newest white Hermitage are followed by a procession of bottled vintages reaching back over several years. Today, from all the appellations of the northern Rhône that produce white wine, there is only one sure thing year in and year out, and that is the quality of the Chave Hermitage blanc. Be it 1986, 1985, 1984, 1983, 1982, 1981, or 1980 (picking the decade I know best), it is a white to be enjoyed young, old, and in between. And there is a pleasure to be obtained by laying down enough bottles of one single vintage to be able to observe its evolution over ten, twenty, or thirty years.

These descents into Chave’s inner sanctum are the ultimate thrill for a wine taster. Deep underground you hear nothing from the outside world, and never are those professional tastings disturbed unless there is an emergency. His cellar is composed of several chambers. One in particular is unforgettable. It is filled with barrels and, in bins along the walls, the family treasury of old bottles, some of which are completely engulfed in mold. The wisps, webs, and curls of mold are colored from velvety black to silvery white and everything in between. Some have a green tinge, some blue. Some patches glisten with droplets of moisture. The stuff hangs from the ceiling, the walls are draped with it, and while it is not exactly teeming, it does appear to be taking over. Thus, the visual backdrop as you regard the robe of the wine in your glass. The cool, damp air is pleasantly thick with aroma. There is the rowdy, backward smell of new red wine in barrel, the mysterious hoary/fresh smell of the fungus, and the continual evaporation of all the wines that have been spit onto the dirt and gravel floor since who-knows-when. It is a setting in which you feel a lineage with the ancients who preceded you, who made the same clinking sounds with a glass thief as the glasses are filled, the same slurping, chewing, spitting sounds, the same lip-smacking, murmurs, and grunts of approval.

Chave has vines growing in several parcels scattered over the Hermitage appellation, and his bottled red is always a blend of them. In the wine literature we find the names of these separate parcels cited well before we come across any reference to Hermitage itself. A document from 1389 mentions Bessards, Méal, Rocoules, Baumes, and others, but the earliest appearance unearthed so far of Hermitage as Hermitage is from 1598.

In April 1983 I arrived to taste Chave’s 1981 Hermitage rouge. He had not yet assembled and bottled his various cuvées, so we wandered from one part of the cellar to another, taking tastes from various foudres, demi-muids, barrels, and casks.

“We will start with Les Dionnières,” he said, plunging his thief through the bunghole of one of his barrels, drawing out some purple wine and, aiming carefully, splashing a bit of it into my glass and his. “Les Dionnières is at the bottom of Hermitage, below Les Rocoules. It always gives a fine, elegant wine, never very tannic. You mustn’t think that the higher slopes always give a wine better than those down below. In fact, when we have a dry year, the lower slopes will give the better wine because the vines are less stressed. In a normal year, yes, the higher, steeper slopes are better. But in terms of the different parcels, to have a good balance, a little of each is essential. In 1981 the higher slopes are better, but you can see that the lower parcels give an elegant, fruity wine. Still, it is certain that if it were bottled as is, separately, it would not be completely representative of the appellation Hermitage.”

CHAVE’S CELLAR

I asked if the lower parcels like Les Dionnières were flat.

“At Hermitage there is no flatland. It is not like Crozes-Hermitage. But the soil is lighter at the base of the hill, which favors the grape’s maturity.

“Here, this is Les Baumes. It always has finesse as well as being tannic. Fine but strong. Les Dionnières has a perfume like little red fruits, raspberry and cherry, but Les Baumes is more like wildflowers. The aromas can change from year to year, however. It depends on the maturity of the grapes and above all if the year was dry or not. It would be too simple if every vintage were alike. Then I could put the same blend into bottles every year. Ten percent Baumes, 20 percent of this, 15 percent of that … It would not hold the same interest for me.”

I gave him my impression of Les Baumes, that it seemed fuller and richer but also shorter on the palate.

“That shortness is due to the astringency of the tannin. It dries out the mouth so it seems shorter. For aging, it has more strength than Les Dionnières. You could make a good little Hermitage by blending the two.

“Here we have Peléas. It has more depth. There is an aroma of violets.

“And this is Les Rocoules. There is not much red grown there. Les Rocoules is almost entirely white.”

I asked how he decided whether to plant red or white grapes in the different parcels.

“Oh, there is not much of a decision to make,” he answered. “That decision was made centuries ago. The nature of the soil decides for you. The sections of limestone and clay are destined to be white, but white in granite won’t work, the result is not elegant enough. This was all determined a long time ago. But I’ve experimented and learned for myself that granitic soil is not suitable for white wine. On the other hand, Syrah grown in white-wine soil works better. See how it gives a fatter wine with more glycerine, more like a white.

“Now, Le Bessard. Can you smell the hawthorn blossom? I pointed it out to you up on the hill yesterday. It grows around here and we often find its aroma in our wine. Bessard has a more tannic structure than the others, without having higher alcohol. There are elements here that you do not find in the others. It is less floral, but longer on the palate … For me, none of them can stand alone.”

I asked if the differences between the wines were a question of exposition, or the level of the hill, or the soil.

“It is always the soil. At Hermitage the exposition is practically the same everywhere on the hillside. But Bessard is essentially granitic.”

“Is it the same clone of Syrah as Peléas and the others?”

“They are all the same. I graft from our old vines when I replant.”

He hesitated and glanced down a row of large oval casks. “We have another cuvée of Bessard to taste, but we’ll get to it later because it is so tannic. First, let’s taste Le Méal.”

Le Méal seemed solidly structured, but less aromatic, less rich than the others. I asked what in particular it imparts to his final assemblage, or blend, in bottle.

“It is a combination of tannins. In the assemblage there is the tannic side to consider, and the floral or aromatic side. Some cuvées bring a certain finesse, a perfume or aroma to the blend, others a tannic support. And then some tannins are harsh; others finer, smoother.”

When I asked him what he thought of Le Méal’s aroma, he said it reminded him of cherry. “But that can change,” he added. “One day you find black currant, and shortly afterward it is more like cherry or vanilla.”

“You don’t find cherries year after year in Le Méal?”

“Absolutely not. It is too simplistic, saying a wine is like this, this, or that. Only the journalists get away with that. They might taste it once or twice a year at most, but when you taste a wine several times a year, you perceive that it is not as easy and definitive as all that!

“Now, here is that other cuvée of Le Bessard I told you about. Notice that this one is in foudre. There is a huge difference between the foudre and the barrel. This is less mature. Less finished. What a difference! Leave the same wine in two different containers and two months later you have two different wines.”

I asked if they had been precisely the same wine at the outset.

“Absolutely, so one can conclude that a wine ‘makes itself’ more rapidly in barrel than in foudre. That is why I like to have a little of each. I’m going to transfer this one into barrels and the other one will go into these foudres before I make my assemblage.”

But why not leave it all in foudre in order to have a slower evolution once it is in bottle, a slower aging process?

“No, there is a different kind of oxidation in bottle. What is aging? It is an oxidation. But the sort achieved in wood you will never achieve in a glass bottle.”

I told him about my experience in Raymond Trollat’s cellar in nearby Saint-Jean-de-Muzols. “He has fifty-year-old demi-muids. Some are chestnut, some oak. After fifty years, of course there is absolutely no taste of wood imparted to the wine, yet the character of the wine from each kind of wood differs.”

“And fifty years from now there will still be a difference,” Chave said, “because the pores of the wood are different. Oak is tighter, more compacted, so the exchange with the air is slower, resulting in a firmer, more closed-in wine. The pores of chestnut are larger. It breathes more easily, resulting in a wine that is more supple, more advanced.”

After we had tasted each cuvée of 1981 separately, we revisited each one and Chave carefully squirted out a bit of this, a bit more of that, a touch of Peléas, until he presented me with a glass of red Hermitage and declared, “Today, this is my conception of what the 1981 assemblage will be.”

If Betty Grable was able to insure her legs, Chave should be able to insure his nose. He lowered it into his glass. “No, it needs something floral … here, a little more Les Baumes … there, see … the nose comes out better.” Then he counted down a row of barrels and took out a few drops of another wine which he added to his composition. “Just a bit more Peléas to soften that tannin. I don’t know. It is imprecise like this, without a measuring device. And it would be simpler if there were only three or four wines to blend, but it is fascinating because here there are so many possibilities. Imagine a composer who had only three or four tones to work with. But wait now, see if a touch more Bessard … from the foudre … no, it isn’t any more satisfying, is it? Before I bottle the 1981 I will spend two weeks working to find the proper assemblage. Afterward, you won’t be able to recognize any of these cuvées we tasted, but there will be a certain harmony on the palate. Today is like a first sketch.”

Afterward the corks began popping. We tasted his 1980, 1979, 1978, and 1977.

The vintage chartists had made the 1977 difficult to market in the United States. I asked Chave if he had some sort of chart or system for rating his different vintages.

“For me, once a wine is in bottle, I have another conception of its quality which is not at all of wine as wine alone. Once you have a sound wine in the glass, your reasoning must be different, and each time you taste a wine you’ve got to imagine it with a dish. Otherwise, you are just saying you prefer this wine a little more than that wine, which is not very interesting. And this is where one can reproach most wine critics. You must be knowledgeable about cuisine in order to recommend a wine, in order to say this wine would go well with game, for example. The ultimate destination of a wine is on the table, with food. Serve the same wine with two different dishes and you will have two different opinions of it.”

Chave then pulled the cork on his 1976 rouge, 1975, 1974, 1969, then the 1942. Blissful appreciation replaced the immense effort of concentration required to appraise the younger cuvées. Going back through the decades of Chave’s Hermitage, you witness as wild, turbulent youth evolves into something sophisticated and profound.

“Here, let’s change everything,” Chave said, turning once more to what his English importer Robin Yapp has called “that sinister sea of fungus.” He pulled out a bottle and scraped a thick puff of mold off the top of the cork before twisting in his corkscrew. There was no vintage on the bottle because no label can survive that humidity, so Chave announced its vintage, Hermitage blanc, 1952. Against the dark background, the deep golden color of the wine was stunning to the eye. The nose was old, thick, honeyed, alive, marvelous. Something about it, perhaps the sensation of immense depth, recalled those lordly bouquets of an old Yquem or an Alsatian vendange tardive, but the Hermitage seemed even more impressive for being dry. It dazzles without the advantage of sweetness or noble rot.

* * *

At harvest, the Hermitage hillside is a colorful scene bathed in a soft sunlight in which there is a suggestion of autumn’s arrival. The vine’s green foliage cascades from wooden stakes, but the impetuous growth of late spring and early summer has passed and the plant looks spent. The Syrah clusters are dark purple and so small, few, and far between you wonder (trying to get a foothold on the steep slope) at the effort that went into producing them. And then suddenly a bottle of Hermitage seems cheap.

Because of the positioning of the hill, the view is spacious, bound by the distant Alps to the east, the Massif Central to the west, and to the south it always seems that if the sky were just a little clearer there would be a view all the way to the Mediterranean. And at the base of the hill there is the mighty Rhône executing an unusually graceful curve.

In 1986 Chave gathered his team of thirty harvesters on October 2, and they began picking the white grapes, which were not white at all. Some Marsanne grapes were golden, some almost purple, others dark and shriveled. The Marsanne was delicious eating right off the vine, and Chave said that he knows it will be a good vintage when he sees the pickers munching on grapes as they work.

Strangely enough, Chave’s team was practically the only one on the hillside. Then I looked closer and noticed that the neighboring plots had already been stripped of their treasure.

“Almost everyone has finished harvesting,” Chave said. He had a big grin. “They were afraid it might rain, afraid to gamble. Some of them finished eight days ago and we are just beginning. They won’t have enough natural sugar in their grapes, so they will have to add sugar. Oh yes, even at Hermitage now they have granted us the right to chaptalize. It is scandalous. So these enologists tell everybody to harvest early in order to have more acidity and avoid the risk of rot. They tell them to pick early, that they can add the sugar later. Here, taste a green grape. You see, it has no flavor, no character. Now taste a golden one. See the difference? They want to make what I call a vin technologique. It is fruity, but they all taste the same whether they are from the Loire, the Rhône, or wherever. That is not what I want. Grapes are a fruit just like a pear or a peach. If they are ripe, they have a lot more flavor and aroma. People forget that a grape is a fruit. They would never eat a green peach, but they harvest green grapes. If they didn’t chaptalize, some growers would have a white Hermitage at 11 degrees alcohol this year. We are harvesting ripe grapes which will produce a wine with 13 degrees alcohol! The flavor of the two wines will be totally different.”

GÉRARD CHAVE AND HERMITAGE

When I left, Chave was instructing his foreman to mix water into the harvesters’ wine supply because at the end of the previous day one of them had stumbled and hit his head on a rock and an ambulance had to be called. They mulled over the subtle insurance question: Was he still on the job, or was he on the way home after work? The worker had just finished washing his hands, the foreman said. Then he argued that if he diluted the wine some of the crew would be angry. “What about the guys who only take a sip from time to time? Are we going to penalize the moderate ones because of the two or three who overdo it?”

Chave said that the wine is too strong. He serves his harvesters Hermitage, a blend of the press wine, the wine from younger vines, and from the less successful cuvées that he does not want in his assemblage. “Hermitage is too strong to drink out in the hot sun.”

It is an argument that must have a five-hundred-year history in the Chave family.

* * *

If Hermitage appears to have been created expressly for the vine, with only a few tucks and folds needed to perfect it, Côte Rôtie is obviously man’s painstaking creation. The steep slopes are a sloppy patchwork of stone walls and terraces, often barely wide enough for a single row of vines. There are parts of the hill where the earth looks more like some jagged extraterrestrial metal than soil fit for cultivation, but the ancients tamed these slopes, and Côte Rôtie, along with Hermitage, is where the Syrah is capable of magnificence.

Syrah, serine, sarine, syrrah, sirah, syras, schiras, schirac, sirac. In 1868, after more than twenty centuries of winegrowing, someone noticed that the serine of Côte Rôtie and the sirrah of Hermitage were the same grape, an indication of how provincial this part of France was, and is. When I arrived in 1976, I was struck by how rustic the cellars and equipment remained, even though the Paris–Marseilles autoroute and railway line is never more than a few kilometers away.

Given the similarity between the wines of Côte Rôtie and Hermitage, it is unbelievable that it took so long for someone to deduce that they are born of the same parent vine. There is a difference between the two wines, but describing that difference has proven to be a problem. Gérard Chave says Côte Rôtie is less heady than Hermitage, a statement that invites charges of chauvinism (or Chavinism) because the aroma of a well-vinified Côte Rôtie from old vines grown upon the original roasted slope has no peer in terms of headiness. There is a difference between these two Syrahs, but to explain it I would have to dredge up notes from a literature class years ago in which my professor tried to simplify Nietzsche’s distinction between Apollonian and Dionysian qualities. It went something like this:

Apollonian. Master of oneself, harmonious, a beauty that is more formal, more architectural, as in the wine of Hermitage.

Dionysian. A wilder force, instinctive, immediate, a beauty that is more passionate than cerebral, as in the wine of Côte Rôtie.

In fact, were Côte Rôtie’s carriage less regal, its aroma might seem ostentatious. Only royalty can wear plumes and glittering jewels and white fox robes and get away with it.

The village that hosts the Côte Rôtie spectacle is Ampuis. Each wine village in France seems to boast Roman artifacts, but when it comes to claims of antiquity, Ampuis is the undefeated champion. Some wine books repeat the unproven story that Ampuis was the site of France’s first vineyard. It is perhaps the name of the place that prompts such nonsense. They say that the name evolved from ampelos, Greek for “vine,” proving that the Greeks cultivated wine grapes at Ampuis even before the Romans showed up. Well, why not?

But what about the theory that Ampuis comes from empoisser, “to make sticky”? Plutarch wrote about the wine of the region and called it a vin empoissé, or at least that is the French translation of what he said. Some are convinced that the Romans added pitch to their Côte Rôtie, which presumably would have made it sticky. Pitch = poix in French, and it is not far from em-poix to Ampuis. It is difficult to imagine anyone adulterating a Côte Rôtie with pitch, but in our era, adulterating it with an overpowering smell of new oak seems to be considered acceptable behavior, so who knows?

Or, am can mean “around,” and puits, which is pronounced exactly like puis, means “well.” Following this theory, Ampuis means “around the well.” To support this theory one can cite the Beaujolais village Amplepuis, meaning “generous well.”

Or am might have been shortened over the centuries from aimer, meaning “to like” or “to love,” or aimable, meaning “happy” or “lovable.” Ampuis = the lovable well? I’ll drink from that.

If am comes from amoeba, we may have a stagnant well.

Or am could have come from the Greek root amph, which can mean two hillsides or a rounded shape as in amphitheater.

The French word puy is also pronounced like puis, and means “mountain” or “height.”

Then there is the theory that puis evolved from the Greek and Latin podium, which referred to the large wall that circled an amphitheater, on which were situated the seats of honor. This is not inconceivable if you visualize the stone walls which follow the rounded shape of the hillsides of Côte Rôtie; however, it does seem quite a drastic case of mispronunciation going from Ampodium to Ampuis.

Theories and legends also abound regarding the initial vine plantings. Many believe that the Syrah arrived via the Greeks, who had settled Marseilles (Massilia) at the mouth of the Rhône, and whose trade took them north via the river. There is no evidence of Greeks settling at Ampuis; however, Greek amphorae have been found downriver at Tain l’Hermitage. It is curious that the cultivation of the Syrah in Provence and in the southern Rhône is only a recent, twentieth-century occurrence, when it was imported from the northern Rhône with the far-fetched idea of ennobling the southern wines. Had it worked its way north from Marseilles, would there not have been traces left in the south? While I have absolutely no historical foundation for supposing it, my nose tells me that the Syrah came from the east, via the Alps. A young Syrah has more in common with a young Nebbiolo from Piemonte than it does with a wine from the Marseilles region.

Terracing the hillsides of Ampuis could have taken centuries. It is doubtful that a Greek or Roman winemaker gazed up, nodded sagely, and decreed them the perfect site for Syrah. In the beginning the vines must have been planted at the bottom of the hill, where farming was easier and where there was plenty of water from the river nearby. And it must be remembered that the Rhône was not stationary. Only in the nineteenth century did man begin to control the course of the Rhône. Before, it changed course almost by whim, and a terrain that was farmed on the plain one year might have been submerged the next, another reason to cultivate the slopes. But when people began tasting wine from the roasted slope someone must have noticed that it produced finer wine, so the vineyards were expanded upward to meet the demand. All this is conjecture; perhaps the Creator installed the terraces on the sixth day in order to drink well on the seventh.

Constructing the stone walls served two purposes. It removed the large rocks from the soil, facilitating cultivation, and it prevented the remaining soil from washing down the hill in a rainstorm.

The walls are handmade, and some workers could not help expressing themselves by creating patterns as they labored. Therefore, some of the walls are random collections of stones, while others form eye-catching designs.

We know that in the seventh century Saint Éloi wrestled with a demon in the church at Ampuis, but as far as I can tell, and I am not the historical researcher needed here, the first documented statement, the first outright proof that there were vines at Ampuis, dates from A.D. 889. Before that, Côte Rôtie was always referred to as a vin de Vienne, or “wine of Vienne,” the more important city a few kilometers north of Ampuis. An act dated “a Friday in the month of April in the second year after the death of Charlemagne” certifies that a certain Monsieur Rostaing and his wife, Andelmonde, donated to the church at Vienne two parcels of vineyard situated “in villa Ampusio,” reserving at the same time, however, their right to the actual fruit from those vines for the rest of their lifetime. Rather than leave the vineyard to some ne’er-do-well relative, they fixed it so the Good Lord would come into possession of some prime Côte Rôtie grapes just as he was deciding whether to send Rostaing and Andelmonde upward to paradise or down into the fiery pit.

Eleven centuries later, there is still a Rostaing with vines at Ampuis. I have neglected to ask him if he is a descendant of Rostaing and Andelmonde, because I cannot risk ruining such a perfect transition. Today’s Rostaing, René Rostaing, was born in 1948 and vinified his first Côte Rôtie in 1970 at age twenty-two.

“In order to understand Côte Rôtie, you must climb up through the vineyards,” he said one day. “Looking out the window of a car is not enough.” He turned out to be a passionate guide who seems to know every nook and cranny, every stone’s mineral composition and geological origin.

The different slopes of Côte Rôtie, such as the two most famous, Côte Blonde and Côte Brune, are separated by deep, stream-eroded ravines. According to Rostaing, the erosion over the millennia created dramatically diverse soils. “Ampuis is a small vineyard, one of France’s smallest,” he said. “We have less than three hundred acres planted in thirty different soils, and no more than a dozen acres share the same exact soil composition.”

As one sees in Chave’s cellar, different soils create different wines, especially when the plant is Syrah.

Hiking up his parcel of Côte Blonde, Rostaing said, “It is this siliceous base of chalk and quartz that gives Côte Blonde’s wine its elegance and refinement. The Blonde is a wine that needs time. For the first few years it seems relatively muted, but with age it begins to express itself. It has a tannin that seems almost delicate, a tannin that is well-integrated into the wine. It has finesse.”

We went back to his car in order to go have a look at La Landonne.

“La Landonne starts here, just beyond the creek,” he said. “La Landonne is not part of the Côte Brune. I insist upon this point because the error has been repeated again and again. There are more slopes to Côte Rôtie than Brune and Blonde. Côte Brune and Blonde make up 10 percent of Côte Rôtie and no more. This tendency to call the southern slopes Blonde and the northern Brune is an inaccurate simplification. From south to north you have Côte Mollard, Blonde, Brune, Moutonnes, Landonne, and Vieillière.”

As we slipped and huffed and puffed our way up the stony incline, Rostaing shook his head sadly. “Look at this. La Landonne starts here, where there is nothing growing but weeds. Over here, a few vines. More weeds over there … La Landonne lies 50 percent fallow! Here is my parcel. Here is Rostaing’s La Landonne! Three thousand square meters. Fifteen hundred bottles per year! The vines over there belong to my uncle, Marius Gentaz. He has five thousand square meters. It’s steep, isn’t it? He has old vines, at least sixty years old. See how they were trained? Beautiful vines! The soil here has more clay. There is very little quartz, so the wine it gives is more rustic, less elegant than Côte Blonde.

“My grandfather made wine here after World War I and sold it in barrel to the local café-bars. Five francs per liter. Côte Rôtie was the everyday wine for the people of Ampuis. You know, a glass while they played their game of boules outdoors in the square. Then, closer to World War II, life began to change, the cost of living began to increase. People wanted more comforts. Before, they would go fishing on Sundays, they wore the same clothes day after day, but later everyone had to own a car, then a second car, a new freezer, a vacation. Meanwhile, Côte Rôtie was selling no better. So what happened? The people decided it was not worth the effort to work the hillsides. They abandoned them. Half of La Landonne lies fallow, and it dates from that period. That was when they planted the flatlands below us, but they planted apricots because they were more profitable than selling Côte Rôtie. Apricots, lettuces, peas…”

Later that day, Rostaing’s uncle, Marius Gentaz, continued the story. A relaxed man in his sixties, dressed in the traditional French worker’s blue coveralls, he said that some of those farmers on the plain had to sell their land to the government in the early 1960s when the Paris–Marseilles autoroute was built. Some used their money to buy vineyard land back on the slopes.

Many of the northern Rhône winemakers think that Gentaz is making the most typical, traditional Côte Rôtie of our day. I asked him what his secret is.

“In order to make a good Côte Rôtie,” he said with unfeigned, almost naïve modesty, “the vines must be planted in the right place and you must bring in healthy grapes. And you cannot make great wine here with young vines. They must be fifteen to twenty years old before they begin to give a pretty wine.”

I said surely there must be something in the vinification, some secret method to explain his wine’s quality.

“Well, you’ve got to take good care of it, keep the barrels filled up to the top.” (My apologies to any winemakers looking for the trick to making good Syrah!) Then Gentaz smiled and said, “You raise the wine the way it has to be raised. I haven’t changed anything. I make my wine the way my father-in-law taught me, the way he made it eighty years ago. Exactly the same way!”

* * *

Fifty percent of La Landonne barren! And, according to René Rostaing, 60 percent of the wine harvested at Ampuis now comes from the plateau, which the ancients more appropriately devoted to corn and wheat. What a tragedy for one of the world’s finest vineyards.

Ironically, in our time the very factor that might mean renewal for the original Côte Rôtie vineyards has an attendant risk, which is that it could alter so drastically the taste of Côte Rôtie as to render it unrecognizable to those who know the taste of the real thing. The various Côte Rôtie bottlings from Guigal, the négociant at Ampuis, dominate blind-tasting events, dominate the wine journals, newspapers, and magazines to a degree that has become dangerous. The public is very close to deciding a Côte Rôtie is by definition oaky and alcoholic, and the next step is the rejection of the traditional Côte Rôtie, which is not oaky or alcoholic.

By no means do I blame Guigal for this state of affairs. He has great commercial instincts and his oaky wines with their blistering alcoholic content are crowd pleasers. It requires talent to so enrapture the public and the critics. Ah, the critics. Never have I seen one single discouraging word about Guigal’s Côte Rôtie, even though it is a very anonymous-tasting wine, easily mistaken for a big, oaky Gigondas or even a Bordeaux. I want my Côte Rôtie to taste like Côte Rôtie. This all reminds me of an acquaintance who always seemed to have a new girlfriend. His girlfriends all had two things in common: huge breasts. His choices might be pretty or not, intelligent or not, interesting or not. Nothing seemed to matter to him as long as the breasts were enormous. It was such an impractical way to assess the quality of a woman that it began to seem almost perverse. And I have an identical reaction to those who go gaga over an inky, oaky, monster wine that has, it might as well be by accident, a Côte Rôtie label. I cannot begin to communicate how profoundly the critics’ embrace of such freak wines depresses me.

Why ask that a wine be jarring to the senses, a criterion that we do not apply to other arts like music or painting in which delicacy is valued, where shading, nuance, even silence or empty space can be considered remarkable. But keep an eye on the wine critics’ ratings. If a wine is black, packs an alcoholic, tannic wallop, and smells like a lumberyard, it receives high points.

Traditional Côte Rôtie does not have a thick, heavy quality, as if it had been applied with a brush. A description from 1786 says Côte Rôtie is “un vin flatteur et fort delicat” (a seductive, highly delicate wine).

A later description says that Côte Rôtie is distinguished by “la finesse de sa sève” (the finesse of its sap) and its unique bouquet, which makes it “one of the most delicate and agreeable wines of France.”

“The finesse of its sève.” Consider the phrase. It is not bad at all. Sève, the sap or lifeblood of a plant, conveys an impression of vigor, of intensity. A Côte Rôtie is by no means light stuff; it is a substantial wine, but what is unusual is this saplike quality combined with a certain finesse, a certain delicacy. Top it off with that amazing perfume of Syrah fruit grown in this special terroir and you have a wine set apart from all others. Anyone can make a heavy, oaky wine. All you need is a new barrel and sugary (or sugared) grape juice. But a Côte Rôtie that tastes like Côte Rôtie can come only from the terroir of the roasted slope and from the traditional vinification developed over the centuries in the cellars of Ampuis.

THE ROASTED SLOPE

How ironic that a heavy, oaky wine should be the object of such acclaim and desire that, thanks to it, the small Côte Rôtie growers are now obtaining a just price for their wine, and consequently land that had been abandoned is beginning to be replanted. I suppose I could be compared to a classical music fan who cannot stand the fact that the public is listening to Elvis or the Beatles instead of Haydn and Mozart, but I fear the day when the classic Côte Rôtie like that of Marius Gentaz disappears completely to be replaced by the Guigal recipe. In more and more cellars I see new oak barrels as the northern Rhône growers try to copy his success.