Condrieu

 

We have travelled past the precipitous vineyards south of Lyon often, and once we even bought excellent Condrieu at the Cave Coopérative of St Désirat.  We have also often bought and enjoyed viognier wines across the south of France and it is a scented grape variety often used in Rhône white wines with other grapes, as well as on its own.  But last week was the moment to enjoy a few sunny days in a riverside hotel and to visit the village and the vineyard which is the original home of the viognier grape.

There is an even tinier and more prestigious Appellation, Château Grillet, tucked in the middle of this hillside area (it has its own railway station just south of Condrieu), but the 'larger' Appellation is still small enough.  Its equally prestigious neighbour the Côte Rotie is on the riverside hills just to the north, between Condrieu and Lyon.  The makers we visited have some vineyards there and we came back with a few bottles of that iconic wine, almost 100% syrah but with a splash of viognier of course to add an exotic touch.

    

But the white wine, Condrieu, was our main focus on this trip.  Of course (as in most high profile areas) the less exalted wines are pretty good too.  We went  with a recommendation to a maker whose IGP viognier was recommended by a friend of a friend ad over the course of our stay in the hotel Bellevue in Les Roches de Condrieu (on the left bank facing the village of Condrieu and the vineyard hills behind) we drank glasses of this and of a late-picked viognier which was dark yellow and delicious.  

So we visited the Mouton winery on the hilltop settlement of Rozay high above the Rhône valley late one afternoon, just after they ahd returned from picking grapes for the day.  Of course we needed to make an appointment at this busy time of year, but we were received with warmth and courtesy, and we could taste both their IGP viognier and the 2 complex Condrieus, together with 2 Côte Rotie cuvées.   

The hillside vineyards in the photos are named Châtillon for one of the cuvées, facing the river.  We could see the vines from which one of our wines was made as we looked out of our bedroom windows or sat in the restaurant each day.  It was a memorable trip, and the wines will be with us to remind us for some time to come.

Visits during the Covid period

Earlier this year we returned, as we do often, to Domaine Lucien Jacob in Échevronne in the Côte d’Or. We were introduced to the Jacobs and their wines over 20 years ago when Mary and the family presented me with a kind of ‘share’ there, and we’ve never regretted it. Despite our encounters with much less expensive wines further south, we would not be without our Burgundy. 

We read of complex and difficult problems in the wine industry - among other things, bubbly consumption is plummeting because people feel they have little to celebrate.  But apart from difficulties in selling and exporting wine, this week there have been local headlines about the lack of water for muscat grapes here, where of course irrigation is not allowed.  But the hot weather also makes producing lower alcohol wines very difficult - quickly ripening grapes have more sugar and so wines end up more alcoholic.

We've had some good visits to winemakers in the past month.  One was an excellent wine tasting outing with visitors Chris and Siena to the Coop in St Christol, and to Ch. Grès Saint Paul. Both were enjoyable, but our encounter with Jean-Philippe Servière at GsP as especially good. We first met him nearly 20 years ago, and his wines are as good as ever; he’s nearly my age and has been making wine for over 40 years (his last holiday, he says, was in 1978!). Nobody can say winemakers have easy lives...

We revisited Nouveau Monde on the coast at Vendres Plage again at the weekend and found the whites and rosés we tasted excellent and reasonably priced. The chardonnay, 'now with vermentino' as the sales blurb might say, is as good as ever (thanks to Régine in Béziers for her recommmendation nearly 20 years ago) and the Chasan, the other white, very good too. I think they are surviving the difficulties just now not only by producing good wine by being next to a campsite, so sales trickle along nicely including a lot of volume sales! We had a very friendly and businesslike reception from Sébastien (his wife Anne-Laure is the oenologue), and although we did not taste reds this time (there is a limit at 32 in the shade!) we will be back to do so. 

Now we are looking forward to a birthday trip to Condrieu and the Côte Rôtie by the Rhône south of Lyon.  Watch this space!

Wines we've drunk in May

Nearly another month has slipped by so here is an update on wines we've enjoyed over the past few weeks

The wines this past month have included

• 4 from the Chemin des Rêves in St Gély du Fesc (2 reds, a rosé and a white)
  
• two from the Minervois (a white and a rosé)
  
• reds from Fronton and the Côte de Brouilly (one of each)
  
• 2 more rosés, from the Côtes du Rhône and from the Côteaux d'Aix en Provence
  
• and 2 more whites from the Jura and our local Grès Saint Paul

I think it is fair to say that there was not a dud among them.  Almost all were bought from the makers themselves, mostly in person though we had some delivered recently because they originate more than 100 km from where we live.  But we are very much looking forward to revisiting winemakers in the Jura, Burgundy, Beaujolais and the Minervois.

Meanwhile our next trip will be to the Domaine de la Fadèze, overlooking the Étang de Thau near Mèze and well within our range.  And who knows, if French distance restrictions ease more may be possible.  Looking forward to wine trips helps us to ease the blues of cancelled holidays.

Drinking in lockdown part 2: white and rosé

We enjoy white and rosé wines, and often have them as apéritifs.  Here's a good variety from the past few weeks - delicious white Seyssel from the Savoie area of eastern France, discovered during our several visits for music to the Val du Séran.  Then two from opposite sides of the Rhône:  from the east, Coyeux near Beaumes de Venise.  When we first discovered them 20 or more years ago it was their sweet muscat that caught our attention - now they make excellent reds and this delicate dry muscat; and from the west (not far from the Pont du Gard, the Roman aqueduct on our doorstep here) some excellent whites and rosés as well as very good red Côtes du Rhône.

The two bottles of Lacoste, white and rosé, were the result of a busy year to and fro to the Lot, where the two dogs we welcomed for short periods were found in a refuge in Figeac.  Their sad tales are told elsewhere, but we were delighted to discover that they were to be found near the wine areas of Cahors, the Côtes du Lot and the  and the Côteaux de Quercy, several hundred km northwest of us here.  And the final two in this lineup are from the Clos de Bellevue, just up the hill to the north of us in Lunel.  Their rosé is also made in a sweeter version equally palatable for an apéro; the dry muscat is another example of the variety of delicious dry wines now being made from the muscat grape.  The view from the courtyard looking back over Lunel is among our favourite panoramas.

Drinking in lockdown - part 1, reds

A while ago I used to post frequent pictures of bottles we'd sampled.  Now, the lineup of empties destined for the bottle bank is a little less random - it only includes the bottles we'd chosen ourselves, without extras brought by guests.  But now we can't travel the bottles evoke more than ever our memories of the places we've visited, winemakers we've met, and favourite grapes.  Above, a few reds.  left to right, one of several excellent wines from a Vinsobres producer, the Domaine de Deurre.  We first discovered the village of Vinsobres during some of our first forays into the Vaucluse in the mid-90s, and vividly recall the magic of climbing the steep winding hill northwards and seeing Mont Ventoux rising ever higher to the south as we drove.

The next in line is from a much more recent trip, our first visit to the Jura last year.  There we discovered the pretty town of Arbois in the hills not far from the Swiss border, and an excellent wine co-op whose pinot noir we are enjoying.  The other three reds are all Beaujolais crûs, from the area south of Mâcon which we've visited often over the past 25+ years - the Fleury and Saint Amour are both from the huge variety of good wines produced by the firm Georges Duboeuf  - he himself died last year, having been a pioneer in the growing reputation of Beaujolais wines, and we have acquired several of these wines for a future tasting with friends once the lockdown is over, but we decided to try these two 'extras' in advance of that.  The Côte de Brouilly however is from one of our longest-standing contacts in the area, Les Roches Bleues,, which we discovered through the 3D Wines scheme for buying wines direct from producers in France.  I've just discovered that this firm has become insolvent - a pity, they introduced us to several excellent producers, some of whom have become friends.  But the miracle of Beaujolais is the variety of wines they produce from the single grape variety, gamay