GOOD GOLLY! WHAT'S GOING ON IN THE SOUTHERN RHONE?
In 1998 or thereabouts, wines in France’s Southern Rhone Valley—the home of the traditionallhy great wines of Chateauneuf-du-Pape—shot up in alcohol, and for me at least, dropped off my dinner menu. While tasting the ’98 reds of a prominent Vacqueyras producer, I wrote “Turley Zin” in my tasting notes, which was not meant to be a compliment. The world fell in love with GSM (the traditional southern Rhone varieties Grenache, Syrah and Mourvedre) blends from places like California, Washington State and Australia, but sales had significantly slowed from the traditional GSM region, the southern Rhone.
What happened, I wondered? Was it climate change or were the wines changing to appeal more to mega-critic Robert Parker’s increasingly deadened palate? Or both?
In the vintages that followed over the past two decades, it has become clear that whether or not Parkerization has had any enduring influence on winegrowing, climate warming has taken its toll. It has been widely reported that the growing season for Grenache has changed so significantly, particularly its out-of-control ripening, that Chateauneuf producers were reducing the amount of Grenache and upping the amount of Mourvedre in their blends to make wines of better balance.
If that is indeed the case, how does that impact the taste, and from the perspective of fine wine appreciation, how does that impact the age-worthiness of one of the world’s most revered wines?
A few years ago my friend Jack McLaughlin pulled out of his cellar an aged Vieux-Telegraphe from the mid-1980s, and on another occasion an aged Beaucastel from the same period. Both wines were spectacular with age, exhibiting all the spice, nuance, delicate fruit, resolved tannins and beautifully balanced character you find in all great aged wines. Now that everything has changed in the making of Chateauneuf-du-Pape, from its ripeness to its blend to its alcoholic strength, it is doubtful to me that the kind of caterpillar-to cocoon-to butterfly development will be possible. The lore of the appellation has created an expectation of great wine, but at this point it is a misplaced one.
Personally, in the past two decades, the most appealing wines of the southern Rhone have not been the vaunted appellation reds of Vacqueyras, Rasteau, Cairanne, Sablet, Gigondas, Lirac and Chateauneuf-du-Pape, but the “everyday” wines labeled Côtes-du-Rhône. Because they were more modest to begin with, the wines seemed to have benefited from the additional heat, cancelling out the green, briary, roasted herb “garrigue” flavors, adding just enough weight to produce juicier, more appealing wines without the punishing alcohol, at least for now. (When California Zinfandels got riper, they also lost their briary character also, but instead of table-worthy balance in place of it, their wines got prune-y, alcoholic and gawd-awful overripe. Which was just fine for folks who like their dinner wines the way they like their port.)
So I was riddled with curiosity as I approached our recent Saturday tasting of red wines from the Southern Rhone. To my surprise, a lot of the wines had left their garrigue character behind, and thanks to Samantha Dugan’s selection, they retained balance and typicity. There was considerable variety on the table, both in flavor and intensity, but for the most part, they represented some of the most satisfying tastes I’ve experienced in red wine in a very long time.
Best of all, compared to the great wines of Burgundy and Bordeaux, the wines of the southern Rhone valley are still great values, several able to be picked up for $25 and less.
As for food-worthiness, I remember enjoying a lower-alcohol Chateauneuf-du-Pape in the early 1970s with a beef dish, but in recent years have preferred southern Rhones with lamb and other Mediterranean delights, as long as the wines weren’t too alcoholic. Unfortunately, it has become harder and harder to find satisfying Chateauneuf-du-Pape, Gigondas, Vacqueyras and others that are under the 14% ABV table wine threshold.
That’s how I ended up drinking more Cotes-du-Rhone bottlings than before. And I saved a lot of money doing it.
My favorite and most reliable and affordable producers:
La Cabotte Cotes du Rhone
Kermit Lynch Selections Cotes du Rhone