On the Ripasso Method

In drinking wines like these you have to remember that the Ripasso method is unlike much of anything else when it comes to making dry wines. The juice of the grapes sits on their raisinated skins for a period of time in order to provide additional extract and intensity. This technique means that these wines are generally much bigger and more alcoholic than other dry reds.

In my opinion most Valpol Ripassos and Amarones are usually uninteresting wines for the price. They are generally over-extracted and aggressive. The best can age forever and it is true that very old wines from producers like Bertani and Quintarelli are completely different from the norm, offering far more elegance. These wines nonetheless often bear resemblance to port in their pruney fruit and leather stewed compote flavours. But here we have something different.

Dal Forno Loves Oak

The Dal Forno does not shy away from extreme extraction and high alcohol. In fact, the alcohol is so high that it is reasonably astringent at this point in its development. The oak is also quite overt making this an extremely aggressive wine.

However, the fruit here is very much unlike most Ripasso method wines I’ve tasted, being much fresher and peppier than I would have expected. I suppose this is needed given the extremities of oak in this wine, but in any case if you enjoy extract and oak but do not generally like the stewed fruit flavours, this is a wine to check out. I would be curious to see if this calmed down with 5 more years in the cellar, though I’m not sure the Oak will ever be shy or subtle here. I also worry about the high alcohol drying out the fruit with too much age – but I do not have enough experience with this wine to say for sure.

In summary, this is a good wine, but not necessarily my style. I also can’t fathom the usual price.

Very Good
$45 at Ferry Plaza Wine Merchant (~$250 CDN at Kits Wine)

La Spinona

This is a small winery that is a hybrid of traditional and modern. While they use the traditional Slovenian oak they also ferment under temperature control in cement vats. The Bricco Faset vineyard is located in XXX and is one of the two top sources of Nebbiolo from La Spinona

The Wine

This is a heavier, more compressed Nebbiolo based wine. While offering the depth of a good wine, it lacks finesse and the tannins remain fierce. I expected a bit more easy drinking wine at this stage in its development, but there are some rough edges to work through that make this relatively difficult to consume without food. It lacks in the fundamental aromatic complexity that makes great Nebbiolo so great.

However, this Barbaresco is still tasty wine, and its lack of subtle complexity makes it an ideal partner for richer, aromatic foods (such as osso buco braised in a lemon garlic sauce) because you do not lose the beauty of the wine’s aromas with the intense food pairings. Other wines, such as the Elio Grasso Barolo in the previous post, call more for a steak with less intense aromatics so as not to overwhelm the wine.

In conclusion, this is a good wine with food, but I would not recommend it compared to similar examples at a similar price point.

Very Good
$50 at Liberty Wine Merchants

Nebbiolo Elegance

Elio Grasso is a somewhat modernist. These are middle aged vines (20-25 years for the Barolos), but they are oh so elegant. Near Alba, the clayey, calcerous soils give rise to wines of great elegance and the Grosso is an excellent example of the truly whispy, ethereal nature of Nebbiolo grown in these soils.

Though modernist in their shorter macerations and occasional use of oak barriques, Grasso does generally use Slavonian oak and his wines can best be described as modern elegance coupled with traditional sophistication.

A Feminine Barolo

This 2005, grown in the south-facing Casa Mate vineyard at 300 metres above sea level, presents that vintage’s lighter berry fruits and aromatic elegance. It is surprising that a wine this young can offer so much at this point, but the combination of increasing efforts to use modern techniques to tame the Nebbiolo grape and the basic reality that so-called “lesser” vintages often offer up much more readily drinkable wines than “great” vintages, make this wine an absolute standout amongst current vintages.

The tannins are still firm, though integrated, and while the oak is still just peeking through, this wine is unmistakably Barolo and unmistakably entrancing in its aromatics. I find it quite elegant and finessed and even somewhat feminine on the palate. This is beautiful, entirely seamless silky Barolo for those who like a touch of modernity and plenty of delicious elegance. This is wonderful wine for drinking now and for the next 3-4 years.

So, I have to now revise my favourite wines in the world to: Northern Rhone Syrah, Alsatian Riesling, Chablis, and Piedmontese Nebbiolo.

Excellent
$116 at Kits Wine

What is Frappato? It is generally considered an unimportant low-tannin grape native to Sicily. COS turns it into something special. The 2010 vintage particularly highlights their prowess with the grape.

Excellent
$33 at BCLDB and Highly Recommended Value

Farming and Vinification

The Ferrando winery was founded in 1890 and is still owned by the same family. Everything is hand harvested here and the farming is extremely “bio-sensitive” without actually trying to be officially organic or biodynamic. All the wines are stainless steel fermented and then aged in oak. While most of the wines see only more neutral large oak barrels, this wine, his top “Black Label” reserve, does see some new oak, though I’d say they know what they’re doing.

The Alps in Italy

With such a northerly climate, you would expect harsher tannins and higher acid. And these properties can indeed be present in some wines from the North. Ferrando’s wines, however, have none of these detriments, instead being impeccably smooth and balanced. With the cooler climate, though, he manages to coax out even more ethereal aromas than are the norm for Nebbiolo.

Floral and lively on the nose, the higher acids and firmer tannins integrated perfectly with about 1 hour of decanting. The lift is astounding and the aromas, almost herbal like thyme flowers and mountain pollens, remind me more of Alpine grasses and air than anything I traditionally associate with Italy.

A fascinating, stunning Nebbiolo that is more lifted and elegant than Barolo and seems brighter and clearer than most of the more southerly Piedmontese examples. There is a lot of fruit to the wine as well, but it is the wine’s textural seamlessness and tremendous aromatic lift, particularly at this young age, that make it a very special wine. One of the most exciting Nebbiolos I’ve tasted in this spotlight and at a killer price for such legendary quality.

Excellent to Excellent+
~$60 USD at Arlequin Wine in SF

An (Ir)relevant Digression

A recent piece in the New York Times by writer Pico Iyer eloquently defended the virtue of quiet. Stillness is a font for focus, understanding and creativity. In a world filled with technologically facilitated distractions, it is increasingly common to operate in a state of numb overload – unable to process the volume and speed of information thrust before us. In this environment, the quantity of our contributions and communications may be increasing, but their quality is decreasing. We are losing the ability to determine what matters.

I also recently learned of Erez Lieberman Aiden, a “scientist” who defies the dominant forms of thinking that the modern world has imputed on thinkers and professionals. Specialization, the narrow concentration on a small, particular area of thought, predominates in the modern world. In my profession, law, the trend has been toward lawyers who work only in limited areas like bankruptcy, insurance, or family law. In medicine the trend is the same: the greatest rewards go to those who become experts in very small regions of health and anatomy. This approach can make sense. We might never reach the same depth of understanding if we had to understand everything rather than one really small thing. On the other hand, specialists lose the ability to see problems from an outside perspective.

Erez’s work, which has focused on using pan-disciplinary approaches to solving difficult problems in science and the humanities has produced some stunning results. With no prior expertise in the field Erez solved the problem of creating a 3D model of the human genome. In the humanities, Erez has started providing some unique insights in English grammar and usage (that verbs regularize in inverse proportion to the frequency of their use).

While the grammatical discovery may not seem overly important to most, Erez is trying to show that the traditional mode of approaching problems by specializing in a very small area (e.g. reading a small number of books very carefully) limits what we can learn. By using mathematical models and Google books, Erez was able to take a broad but less in depth view of the English language by looking at 4% of all books written from the Middle English period to today and then extracting grammatical use patterns from that information. This approach has never been tried in the humanities before, but it produced a fascinating and important insight into English grammar usage.

These two seemingly unrelated stories share in common the tendency of modern thought and communication towards contradictory extremes. While we have less and less time to concentrate, the ways in which we think are becoming increasingly compartmentalized. Even as we spend more and more time looking in depth at discrete ideas, our knowledge is becoming less important, less insightful, less reflective.

Without both time to be quiet and the openness to see from multiple perspectives, we become less effective problem solvers.

And Into Wine

So what of wine? The privilege of drinking ‘great’ bottles becomes increasingly meaningless in its privileged aceticism. Every day drinking wines are often discussed in the North American press as some sort of profound basis of community that the Europeans have long understood but that we are only beginning to appreciate. Of course, this refrain ignores the basic reality that wine in Europe is largely inflected by culture and nationalism and is not just an innocent marker of friendly community. Even in Europe, for most people wine is just something to drink with food, and much of the everyday stuff that most consume is pretty poor quality.

So, once again, good wine? It’s about privilege. It is lifestyle, hedonism, romanticism. But occasionally it can teach us more than just about the good life.

The Story of Clape

Across a mundane, concrete-grey road – a doorbell. Adjacent to the ringer, on plain white paper, the word “Clape”. A calm older man opens the door. “Bonjour. Nous avon un rendez-vous”.

During harvest, the Rhone Valley is as quiet and desolate as it is, cliche-like, “humming with activity”. Ringing the bell at Clape prompted a few rare human moments as the old man (whom I later deduced was Auguste), unceremoniously escorted me across the street from the nondescript warehouse front to a small structure erected across the street to meet with his grandson Olivier, who was busy pumping over.

Nothing at Clape is glamorous. Olivier looked stressed. Harvest is a time of endless deadlines and overwhelming long hours. Only 3 people work full time in the cellar at Clape – Olivier, his father Pierre-Marie, and a cellar hand – with the semi-retired Auguste lending his forceful opinion to the final blend (all three Clapes must agree before the Cornas is bottled).

But Clape is much more than a “family” winery. It is an expression of generational differences not in conflict but rather as working to produce something greater than any of them individually.

Clape is one of the very few wineries left in Cornas that makes only one Cornas wine, choosing not to bottle single vineyards like their neighbours Domaine Courbis or Thierry Allemande. This allows them to whittle down the messages to one meangingful expression.

The Clapes’ lack of pretension and their focus on the single question “What is Cornas?” has given them a sense of wine as more than privilege. Wine is the interweaving of the various generations of their family and of Cornas itself. Theirs is a question of expression rather than pleasure. They are thus careful that this focus on expression avoids the risk of dilution. With 5.5 hectares of vineyards in Cornas, they have no plans to expand in size. They have also not increased their prices to obscene levels despite being one of the most important and respected wineries in France.

The Interdisciplinarity of Generations

I rode down the Domaine’s rickety industrial elevator with Olivier into the dank mold infested cellar that is not much bigger than a walk-in closet. This dark cellar houses all the barrels of each of Clape’s vineyards. Each vineyard is aged separately and then blended into the final wine according to the dictates of the tri-generational counsel of Clapes. Clape belies such details as their holdings of perhaps the greatest Cornas vineyard “Sarbrotte” (purchased from a retired Noel Verset) and other of the best sites in the region by announcing none of these details on the bottle.

The Clape Cornas is made without destemming and, as such, the grapes are hand sorted in the vineyard. The granite soils and warmth of Cornas make the wines denser and richer than many in the Northern Rhone. However, uniquely, Clape uses 40-60 year old Foudres from Alsace to age the wine, which allows the fruit and soils to push out without much of any influence from the oak.

Domaine Clape has no website and so seems to live in an informational vacuum. But this choice, and it is a choice, is not about remaining obscure. Rather, it is about quiet. About focus. The Clapes’ communication has been refined into a series of decisions that once a year becomes “Domaine A. Clape Cornas”. The rest of the time they listen, reflect and remain in quiet.

Yet, both Pierre-Marie and Olivier have international experience. Olivier has worked in both Australia and California and he told me it was challenging coming home not because of all the new ideas he wanted to bring into the mix, but rather because of the pressure on him to have the same skill at listening and understanding Cornas and keeping the Clape bottling one of the most distinctive and true in France. Because of this, the Clapes are interdisciplinary wine makers, even though they make only one “Cornas” (the second Renaissance bottling is of younger vines).

It takes guts to jump into wine making techniques all over the world and to come home still humbled by what already was. By way of example, Olivier slyly commented to me that his compatriot Maxime Graillot, by distinction, is trying to do too much, making too many styles and wines with too much land. He was, in other words, overloading on communication rather than pulling back and making more precise decisions about what matters.

On Stripping Away

That same dark cellar in Cornas also houses the entire stock of Clape’s old wines, going back to Auguste’s first bottlings in the early 20th century. The mould-infested creatures sat as comfortably as rock in that cellar. They were as poems housed silently in an old, nearly forgotten library.

My visit to Clape was, like a great poem, a stripping away. The privilege of wine there was not lifestyle – it was voice. Not many people find voice, whether their own or others. A wine like Clape’s Cornas is an embodiment of voice that only a very few will ever have the chance to experience. And it speaks with a clarity nearly impossible to find in the world of wine.

Clape is also a reminder of the importance of voice and of how to find it. Sometimes we must keep ourselves clear of the many interferences around us to come close to what is essential in our lives and to understand how we can add meaning through our choices. Everything else is the white noise in which we inevitably must make decisions. But, without time for reflection how can we know what choices to make and which are better than others?

The privilege I now feel when drinking a bottle of Clape’s singular Cornas is that this wine has become a rare reminder that, in order to stay in touch with one’s voice, one must take a moment of quiet to reflect, reformulate, and reinvigorate – to figure out how to make one’s contribution matter. This particular privilege thus reminds me that such moments carry with them a concordant responsibility. Deciding how to act on that responsibility is one of the great questions of life.

The Voice of Cornas

2009 Renaissance Cornas: Big and fruity nose right now with a jammy fruit palate. The acid is fresh and the wine has amazing balance. Huge, fresh and delicious. Excellent.

2009 Cornas: Very very young, but utterly complex. Dark flowers, cherries, plums, meat and minerals. Structured for millenial aging. Extremely serious wine compacted to the point of near incomprehensibility. Once this gradually releases from its primordial density, it will be epic. Excellent+.

1996 Cornas: A ‘lesser’ vintage. Storied wine. Each sip requires contemplation. A fully open and resolved wine. Tremendous florals and perhaps the most intricately delicate Syrah I’ve ever smelled and with Grand Cru Burgundy-like elegance. Excellent+.

Of Soils and Vineyards

So let’s talk about soils. Calcerous marl – a fertile soil that produces softer more delicate Nebbiolo. In the east, the older and poorer soils of marl and sandstone provide deeper more intense wines. However, as discussed in the brilliant Vino Italiano by Joseph Bastianich and David Lynch (no not that Lynch), soil differences are supplemented by cellar technique and the intenser soil profiles can be softened or the more elegant ones can present more hardly simply based on the length of maceration and the use of oak barrels.

The Scavino Carobric creates an even greater enigma, being a blend of the Rocche di Castiglione, Fiasco and Cannubi vineyards in Castiglione Falletto and Barolo respectively. Paolo Scavino reports that the two vineyards in Castiglione do not tend to make great wines on their own but require blending. I suppose the addition of the legendary Canubi vineyard likely adds elegance and power, the Rocche di Castiglione adds aromatics and the Fiasco structure.

2000 vs. 2001

Vintage is important in Piedmont. Not just because “great” vintages make ‘better’ wines but because most Barolos truly do reflect vintage character. Structure and perfume differ considerably between vintages. Let’s take 2000 versus 2001. In 2000 you get greater power but also greater approachability with certain wines. 2000 had enough heat and concentration that the given the fruitiness of the Nebbiolo in that year, the fierce tannins of the grape wer possible to tame earlier using modernist techniques. 2001, in contrast, is a much more structured and tannic vintage. Still warm, it yet tended to produce wines with greater tannin and higher acid than 2000. And we’re not talking such differences that make the wines any less good. Rather, it is a question of style, preference and age. The 2001’s seem to require more age than 2000 for both modernists and traditionalists. In 2000, however, my experiences have suggested that the modernists managed to tame the Nebbiolo beast at an earlier aging curve than the traditionalists, whose wines are still atom-dense. Yet a further testament to the complexity of great Nebbiolo.

Love or Love?

A wine with stunning perfume, I found this 2001 Carobric extremely expressive and deep and in a very good place aromatically. Only Nebbiolo can smell like this and these “haunting aromas” as Oz Clarke describes, are unlike any other wine in the world.

The palate is denser, tighter and slightly darker than other Barolos of the vintage. The fruit begins slightly pruney, but opens to more elegance with air, which suggests to me that with age this wine will transform considerably. I’d say this ultimately needs time to soften and unwind if you’re into wines at full maturity. However, it is also incredibly delicious right now. So, drink now with joy or in 10 years, also with joy. A hard wine not to love.

Excellent to Excellent+
~$160 at Kits Wine Cellar

Alban grows his fruit in vineyards in the Edna Valley, which is south of Paso Robles. His sites get considerable cool wind influence from the sea, which intensifies his berries and reduces yields to miniscule levels. His rhone variety wines are amongst the absolute best in California.

Since 2007 Alban has started making this entry level Syrah from young vine estate fruit rather than purchased fruit. The difference shows. This is classically massive wine from the central coast, but there is something just too damn delicious about this Alban to complain. It certainly exemplifies the wine as cocktail criticism of California. But you know what? Sometimes you don’t want food with your wine and some of the old world wines higher in acid don’t fit the craving. This did. I loved it.

Excellent
$40 USD at K&L Wine

But, Barolo is the heart of Nebbiolo. The wines are the most complex and indicative of terroir compared to Nebbiolo from any other region. They are also amongst the greatest wines in the world – an amazing achievement for such a small region that places it in the same echelon as Burgundy and the great regions of the Northern Rhone.

Though, as is almost now a cliche in Italy, there is still a division of ideology between the traditionalists and the modernists. Veglio is one of the latter.

The Crus of Barolo

Barolo terroir is a story of the great villages and crus in the Barolo zone. There are 11 villages and many crus within those vineyards. The most famous of the villages are La Morra, Castiglione Falletto, Serralunga d’Alba and Montforte d’Alba. It is the last of these that is the home of the vineyard that is the source of fruit for this wine.

The soils of Barolo tend to either be old or young, making wines of elegance or power, respectively. Castelletto, in Monteforte, generally has young soils producing powerful wines with strong tannins. As such, wine from this cru requires much more time in the bottle before opening than wines made from fruit of the crus with older soils. Modernists such as Veglio try to tame the powerful tannins of such vineyards by using french barriques which tend to smooth the wines out. As such, the 2000 is, unlike some of its compatriots, drinking very well right now.

The Wine

Aged entirely in French barriques, the Castelletto is made with mostly old vine material. Despite the barrique use, the wine has by now come out of its oaken shell and is quite elegant and delicious.

A nose of darker cherries, walnut skins and violets. There is crazy intensity on the nose and palate and with some air the wine shows its complex layering of flavour. This is still youthful wine and will continue to develop for 5-10 years, but is delicious right now with a good food pairing. A very well made Barolo just starting its journey into excitement.

This is not upper echelon Barolo, but it is extremely good, particularly at its price point.

Excellent
~$80 at Kits Wine Cellar

In a year filled with travel to France, off the cuff trips to Portland and San Francisco , the first Natural Wine tasting in British Columbia and more than a few nice dinners with friends, the past 12 months may be the toughest yet to measure up my greatest wine experiences of the year. Thus, I’ve decided to mix in both experiences and wines and try to come up with something that includes both those amazing trips and some of my best domestic experiences.

I always look forward to writing this list each year because it reminds me of how spoiled and lucky I am, what a great group of friends I have and of the many wonderful people trying to make the wine industry in British Columbia work like a regularly functioning business sector. Kudos to all of them.

10. The “Home Vineyard” series of wines from Pyramid Valley Winery in New Zealand. Mike Weersing, the mind behind Pyramind Valley, may be insane. The vines may still be young. But this is probably some of the most exciting wine coming out of any New World wine region right now. For best new world wines, I had to decide between these wines or the Wind Gap Syrahs from Pax Mahl in California. The Pyramid Valley edged out Wind Gap simply because they seemed just that much more radical and were a total shock to me when I first drank them. For the record, I had the Earth Smoke Pinot Noir and the Lion’s Tooth Chardonnay. If any are left in the province, you can find them at Marquis Wine Cellars.

9. San Francisco Beer Week 2011. My infatuation with beer began around the same time as my love for wine. However, my budget as a student meant that I used to drink a lot more beer than wine. This trend has tipped back towards wine these days, but in the past 5 years I have witnessed Vancouver go from a beer backwater to an up and coming Portland. We still have a long way to go, though, as evidenced by my second time attending the San Francisco Beer Week, which is probably the best series of beer events in the world. While living in Berkeley I had a chance to try many of the USA’s top beers. This year’s trip down to SF in February saw me complete my quest to try all of the greatest beers in the world with a healthy dose of Russian River’s Pliny the Younger and Lost Abbey’s legendary Cable Car (a sour beer). The latter beer is only available at Toronado’s in SF and only during beer week. The former is largely considered to be the best IPA in the world and is released only on tap and only once a year. It was an epic end to a long journey.

8. The Wines of Etna, Sicily. This year I discovered that the grape Nerello Mascalese makes sophisticated, elegant and yet frutily delicious wines in the tiny Etna DOC in Sicily. Etna is a still active volcano and the vines are all grown in various volcanic soils. Many of the top producers (such as Passopisciaro) bottle individual crus and the differences are striking. In my opinion Etna is one of the most exciting regions in the world right now. Producers to try: Tenuta delle Terre Nere, Passopisciaro, Benanti, Cornelissen.

7. Emmanual Brochet Champagne “Le Mont Benoit” 1er Cru Brut: Discovered at a wonderful bottle shop in Lyon France and described to me as “Selosse but more consistent”, this stunning Champagne cost a mere 30 euros. No sulphur, grower champagne at a miniscule production level. A perfect example of what we’re missing over here in B.C. – a wide range of properly stored and reasonably priced grower Champagnes. Marquis is now one of the only places in town with a worthy selection. You won’t find this there, though. I’d say look for it the next time you’re in France, but that would make me sound like a douche.

6. Cune Vina Real Cosecha 1976: I was lucky enough to attend a few dinners at Rasoul’s (fanatical wine collector) place this year, and this wine was the pick of all those I tasted. It is amazing how well Rioja can age and how elegant, lithe and alive it can be after 34 years. A real treat and one of the oldest wines I’ve had.

5. Drinking wine poured by Jake at L’Abattoir. L’Abattoir has become my go to spot for wine in this city. Given our ridiculous licensing laws there are pretty much 0 wine bars. L’Abattoir (a restaurant) is my wine bar. With a wine program developed and championed by the ever-innovative Jake Skakun, you won’t find the likes of chilean merlot or argentinian malbec on this list. And, unlike most restaurants in B.C., B.C. wines are placed in reasonable numbers beside their international brethren rather than dominating the list. L’Abattoir is where you go to taste naturalist wine from top Beaujolais Cru producer Jean Foillard, a geeky little white from some small producer in the Languedoc, or if you feel like ponying up the cash, 10+ year old Barbarescos and other wine geek love. The wines also generally pair excellently with the food. Oh, and if you can get him talking, Jake exudes his enthusiasm for his wines and the discovery of ethically produced, innovative, challenging and ultimately delicious wines from around the world.

4. Tasting the Nichol Vineyard 2010 wines at the winery. I’ve long desired to get into B.C. wines, but have always found it a challenge when I can choose to drink some of the world’s most delicious wines for the same price. This summer, however, I enjoyed a fantastic tasting at Nichol Vineyard where I tasted their 2010 Gewurztraminer, Pinot Gris and Syrah and found each to be excellently balanced, clean and refreshing and also very reasonably priced. These are really some of the best wines being made in Canada right now. Their new kegging program is killing it (yep, wine on tap) – try it out on tap at the Edible BC restaurant on Granville Island or grab a bottle at Kits Wine or Marquis Wine Cellars.

3. Mattieu Barret Billes Noirs Cornas 2004. Another wine I had in France. Sorry! But Barret’s Cornas was a revelation. Not only because it was the purest Syrah I’ve ever tasted, but also because Barret is a naturalist whose wines transcend the immediate pleasure of those wines’ texture and aroma to be a truly great wine, worthy of sitting in the Pantheon of the Northern Rhone’s best. Purchased in that same Lyon bottle shop.

2. Visiting Domaine Marcel Deiss. The highlight of my time in Alsace was spending 2 hours tasting and learning at Domaine Marcel Deiss. This was a complete experience from which I walked away with a completely different appreciation and comprehension of Alsatian wines. Deiss also happens to make some of the most stunning whites in all of France, and his Grand Cru wines are not only of the very best in Alsace, but can go toe to toe with many a great Burgundy for complexity. Deiss is a pioneer, championing a radical break from tradition in Alsace by, of all things, reengaging in the most traditional of French practices: labelling by vineyard site rather than variety. Deiss believes in coplantation and blends. He may be controversial, but one taste of his wines proves he is on to something. You can occassionally find some of his wines in Vancouver at Everything Wine and Kits Wine Cellar.

1. 3 Days in the Northern Rhone. If I split each of my experiences in the Northern Rhone apart, they would have dominated this list. As such, I will simply include them all in this omnibus item. It was an easy choice to put these three days at the top of my list. Walking the hills of Hermitage, tasting wine with and meeting all three generations of the Clape family in Cornas (post still to come), watching father and son at harvest side by side at Domaine Graillot, tasting Condrieu at the iconic Domaine Georges Vernay and eating dinner (with some fabulous wines) at the quirky wine-geek paradise Le Mangevins in Tain L’Hermitage were only the highlights. It helped that my hotel room overlooked the Rhone River and the vineyards of St. Joseph. The Northern Rhone has always held a special place in my heart, being the region that first got me seriously into wine. Perhaps it is for this reason that these are amongst my favourite wines of all. To be able not only to walk the vineyards and taste the wines in situ, but also to talk to and share a glass with the growers themselves, was without a doubt the best wine experience I’ve had to date.

Happy Holidays!