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Uncorked:
By CHRIS SHERMAN, Times Staff Writer |
 [Times photos: Chis Sherman] Winemaker Louis Barruol in the ancient cellar of Chateau de Saint Cosme, a winery that has been in his family for more than 500 years. |
GIGONDAS, France -- The broad, flat valley of the Rhone in southern France is the last of this country's great red wine regions to be discovered by American wine drinkers.
Bordeaux with its cabernets, merlots and chateaux usually comes first, then the silky pinot noir of Burgundy. Third is that vast, sunny area that spills south from Burgundy for 100 miles into Provence and the Mediterranean, where the grapes and the wines are less well known.
Americans are only now exploring the joys of syrah, grenache and other Rhones after they've been introduced by Australian and California wineries that call themselves Rhone Rangers.
We're mighty late. Grapes have been growing in the Rhone since Caesar's armies marched up the valley legion after legion, building cities, amphitheaters, aqueducts and, yes, vineyards.
This is the Vaucluse region of Provence, a hot landscape of stony hills and fields of lavender that seems ancient.
So it is hard to call these wines new. The best-known Rhone wine, Chateauneuf du Pape, does translate as "the new castle of the pope," but that would be when the popes relocated from Rome to Avignon and spent 100 years in Provence. When you see the crumbling battlements of the outlying papal fort above the vineyards, it's obvious 600 years have passed.
The Middle Ages are recent history compared with what you'll find a few miles away in the hill town of Gigondas up against the Dentelles. There, in the basement cellars under Louis Barruol's house, is some of the oldest evidence of winemaking in France, a series of stone vats the Romans carved in 200 A.D.
 The label from the 2000 vintage of Gigondas from St. Cosme, the third Louis Barruol has made since taking over the family winery. |
The vats are positioned at different elevations down a slope so the wine would be filtered by gravity, an idea that makes Barruol smirk.
Not that it doesn't work. To the contrary, the most innovative modern wineries now brag that they have been designed to use the power of gravity to clarify their wines.
"The new architects think they have discovered something. It is something the Romans knew long ago," Barruol says. It's the kind of simplicity and naturalness that a new generation of Rhone winemakers embraces.
Gigondas is a good place to explore the hidden complexities of the Rhone, and the Chateau de Saint Cosme is the perfect spot to know Gigondas at its best, through its most ancient roots and in its most sophisticated form.
Since 1997, when Barruol took over the vineyards his family has worked since 1490, St. Cosme has become acknowledged as one of the finest reds in the southern Rhone, with a consistently remarkably rich body, silky texture and flavor fat with fruit. It's still somewhat underappreciated, and at around $20, it's a steal compared with equivalent Burgundies and Bordeaux.
Though inexpensive Rhones have often been known as easy food wines for picnics, grilled meats, and pasta and pizza, the best wines of Gigondas and neighboring Vacqueyras cost only a little more and are sumptuous. They have spicy, earthy flavors that can stand up to strong lamb and stout cheese; their thick texture goes well with the richness of a steak -- or instead of one.
They have another user-friendly payoff: Most vintages on the shelves now are good drinking only two or three years after the crush. Those in which the tannins are still a little rough will be chocolately soon enough and last 15 years. Find a good one and buy a case; you can drink now -- and later.
The Rhone region is a complicated thing. It stretches a long way along the river, and its cotes, or hillsides and edges, allow vineyards as much as 70 miles apart to produce wines called Cotes du Rhone, a light but lively and peppery red, or Cotes du Rhone Villages, its more elegant version.
A wide variety of grapes grow in the region and produce high alcohol in the hot, dusty vineyards. They produce a wide range of quality and such quantity that the region was best known in France for bulk wines red, white and rose, and a handful of good names.
To sort out Rhone wines and what's happened to them, it's best to divide them into north and south. In the north, the best vineyards are planted largely with syrah, which makes the famous reds of Hermitage, Cote-Rotie and St. Joseph, and are the headquarters of the biggest firms, such as Guigal and Jaboulet.
The southern half broadens and becomes more Italianate as it nears the sea.
Dozens of grapes are used: Grenache replaces syrah as the red of choice, assisted by mourvedre and cinsault. The whites include marsanne, rousanne, picpoul and clairette. The local blends are traditional and elaborate, often adding white grapes to tame rough and ready reds, most famously and successfully in the 13 grapes of Chateauneuf.
But much more is here within half an hour: the slippery dessert muscat of Beaumes de Venise, the crisp roses of Lirac and old reds verging on new glory.
It is in the last where the greatest strides have been made, especially in Gigondas and Vacqueyras.
In the middle of the last century, 16 of the villages with the best grapes were allowed to affix their name and bragging rights to better blends, albeit awkwardly, as in Cotes du Rhones-Village-Sablet.
Eventually, two of those villages were recognized for such quality they were allowed a pure appellation: Gigondas and Vacqueyras.
Winemakers in both villages put shields in raised glass on their bottles, like the embossed papal keys on those of their famous neighbors in Chateauneuf. Critics debated whether they were undervalued deals or overrated hype.
Disappointing wines, from thin wines out of overplanted vineyards to big, harsh, unbalanced wines, can still be found in both villages. Big cooperatives and tiny quantity-driven producers make plenty of vin de table to sell to restaurants and frugal drinkers who fill their trunks with 22-liter "cubitainers" of plastic at $40 or less for 6 gallons. And some wineries' top wines are still ragged and hot.
But the new consensus is that Gigondas, Vacqueyras and some other areas of the southern Rhone can make elegant wines, certainly in the last string of great vintages -- terrific in '98 and 2000 and not shabby in '99 -- and especially in the right hands.
Those would be hands such as Barruol's. He avoids the old bulk mentality, prefers older vines, keeps yields low so the grapes are fat with color and flavor, crushes them on the lees long and coolly, and blends very carefully.
An American who remembers grenache only as a high-alcohol junk wine, usually a rose, will be awed tasting it from Barruol. It ranges from the bottom level of Cotes du Rhone to the Gigondas grown on his 30-acre estate, and his premier cuvee, Gigondas Valbelle.
The grenache is fleshed out with syrah and cinsault, another workhorse grape of the south, and shows the same strength and power it does in Spain, where it is known as garnacha (and also making great wines again). Barruol also works with select growers, and as a negotiant, he has produced a lush Cote-Rotie that is 100 percent syrah and a seductively honeyed Condrieu from vineyards in the north.
Although Barruol is a pioneer, he is not alone. Other growers, winemakers and exporters, such as Patrick Lesec, are putting new pride into Gigondas and Vacqueyras, although the larger is still dominated by large co-ops.
On the border between the two villages, for instance, is a tasting room shared by young winemakers Phillipe Cartout and Cecile Duserre. Both share the commitment to raising standards. Cartout's Domaine des Espieres makes perfectly smooth Gigondas, Vacqueyras and Cotes du Rhone-Villages that are almost as rich. Duserre's family's Domaine de Montvac makes more Vacqueyras than Gigondas but takes the same effort with old vines, low production and meticulous care.
"There are only a few of us who do this, but there will be more," Cartout says after an early afternoon tasting of his best.
He, Barruol and a handful of others go to Paris in November to show how the new generation of Gigondas tastes.
For them, it is part of an effort to restore a good name. Wine drinkers who explore them will find them worth remembering.
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From the Times Taste section
From the features wire
