You're listening to another episode of Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. We are coming to you today to talk about the premier Rhone producer, Etienne Guigal, and in the room with me, we have a very special guest. Well, we have two very unspecial guests. First to my right. Hey, I'm Pat. I do whiskey stuff. All right. And? I'm Chris. I am the least in a descending order of important people. And the most across from me today, we have Patrick Will. Patrick Will is the brand development director at Vintus, the brilliant folks that import and supply us with these wines. And he's worked with the Guigal family and their wines for 26 years. So he knows everything about the family, the wines, the terroir of the Rhone. And so we're going to kind of work through a ton of wine today and hopefully kind of communicate their story and their impact, really, that they've had on the global wine kind of scene. So Patrick, thank you so much for coming to Chicago and taking part, sharing this with our listeners. So these really are wines that have been known as kind of the benchmark of the crews of the Rhone or what people kind of hold up other producers to. Much of the time when we think about these families, we think they've been making wine for, you know, over 10 centuries, which is not unheard of in France with a long history of production. But the Guigal is actually just in their third generation here. So, relatively kind of recent when it comes to this kind of level of producer here. So, tell us kind of how it all got started and how you met the Guigal family. Well, first of all, I want to say thank you for including me this morning and on this podcast. And delighted as always to be able to spend some time with good friends who enjoy good wine, as well as the wines of Guigal. You're absolutely right. They are relatively new in the pantheon of Rhone producers and of course, overall in France as well. You quite rightly stated that there are many domains that go back multiple centuries, six, eight, ten generations and so forth. Etienne Guigal, who you mentioned initially, was the founder of this domain. He traveled to the Rhone at age 14, looking for work. He was the oldest of nine children and it was about time he went out and got a job, right? So he ended up picking fruit, ended up in Ampouille, the northernmost wine producing area in the Rhone Valley. He eventually worked his way, not only to be in the cellar at Vidal Fleury, but also became the general manager and the winemaker there over a period of time. Right after World War II, he had already started his own company actually in the middle of World War II, 1942, but he left Vidal Fleury to start E. Guigal for Etienne Guigal and opened his doors in 1946. Unlike the atmosphere today in the Rhone, the reputation of that part of the Rhone Valley, the Cote Rotie and its nearby neighbor, Condrieu and also Saint Joseph and so forth had virtually no attraction at all in the market. So nobody knew those wines. Most of the business that Etienne started was in following on Vidal Fleury was merchant business. So he was doing a lot of business with the growers in Chateauneuf du Pape and in the Cote du Rhone, which we have on our glass here. So let's actually segue into the wines in our glass. And we have the Cote du Rhone Blanc and the Cote du Rhone Rouge. And so you mentioned maybe some involvement in the South before, and can you tell us a little bit about the wine coming out of the South and how they go about kind of sourcing this fruit? You know, I hear they taste like 200 wines before 830 in the morning. So tell us how they go about finding these wines. So the wine we have in our glass here, a red and white Cote du Rhone, which is the regional appellation of the Rhone Valley. These are both entirely or almost entirely from the Southern Rhone. That's where the largest concentration of vineyards is. By far compared to the North, it's about 90% to 10% compared to Northern Rhone. These are wines which are sourced as wine. I should point that out because Marcel Guigal now and his son Philippe, the second and third generation of Guigal, they like to judge a wine right after malalactic fermentation. So they do a lot of tasting, up to 200 wines in a given morning. Let's say if people are bringing them samples from the South to put these cuvées together. These are the merchant wines essentially for them. It's a large part of their business and they are purchased as wine, but they're purchased very early and brought to their sellers in Ampouille. They do all the aging, élevage and bottling and blending and bottling there. A little bit of back story about these wines is interesting. Each of them has a very interesting point. The white is based on about 60% Vionier. You can tell that immediately when you put your nose in the glass. Clearly, the snap of Vionier is all over the nose. It's like a baby Condrieu almost. Well, I think that's what I was going to lead to is that Marcel, you know, Etienne, I should point out that Marcel took over the winery. That's Etienne's only child when he was 17 as his father had had a stroke and lost his eyesight for a while. But Marcel was involved from very early on and Marcel was very, very interested in the Appalachian just south of Cote Rotie and that's Condrieu. And he was instrumental along with Georges Vernet and we'll get to that when we talk about the Condrieu. But in rebuilding that Appalachian in the 70s, he started bottling Condrieu and encouraging growers to produce grapes again. And he thought it would be great if he could put Vionier in his Cote du Rhone Blanc. Most Cote du Rhone Blancs are made of Grenache, Claret, Bourbon Link, wines that don't age very well and that tend to be a little oxidative and don't have much aromatic interest. This is just the opposite of that. And it was really Marcel Guigal's encouragement of a lot of growers that he worked with in the southern Rhone. He encouraged them to plant Vionier. Marcel was instrumental in getting Vionier put into the permitted grape varieties for the regional blends down there. And now Guigal's purchased about 60 to 70% of the Vionier that's in the southern Rhone. And it's part of their doing. So that was the crucible, if you will, for how this wine was created. Alicia, what do we sell that wine for? This is, both of these wines are on the shelf for $14.99. Whoa. These are your value expressions. And to Patrick's point and Chris's point, very, very few people are actually, is any other Cote du Rhone Blanc producer leading with Viognier or as much as you do a few others. But it is, as you said, definitely royal. Bruchin maybe, has 100% Viognier. There are so many layers of, especially kind of this stone fruit, all the floral sitting on top of the glass and really nice weight as well to the wine. What a pleasant $15 bottle of wine. Yeah, this is a killer value. And dare I say that the nose speaks strongly of jackfruit. If only Roger were here. Well, it's a wine I always recommend for Mediterranean cuisine. It has a lot. It's very cuisine friendly. It's kind of forgiving in a sense. It's not overly acidic. It's very easy to drink on its own. And the blend here is based on, as I said, Viognier but then Marcon, Roussaint, Claret, Berbalink and then only about 2% Grenache Blanc. And then Grenache Blanc used to dominate these blends. But as I said, it's really a minor player in this one. Excellent. So yeah, let's move on to the Cote du Rhone Rouge. We're drinking the 2018 Vintage, as I said, also on the shelf for 15 bucks. Another great value, I actually tend to buy this at the holidays in Magnum because there's just no one who can't like this wine. And it goes with any food that you're about to go to for a holiday party and it's fun. And you're really flashy. I mean, it's, you know, you get a lot of attention busting on Magnum out of the party. Magnum's made for more fun. The story behind the Cote du Rhone, I did mention that they each sort of had a backstory. The red has taken me a, you know, I've worked with the Guigals now, had the pleasure and honor of doing that for 26 years. It's taken me almost that long to learn really what the special aspects of this wine are. In particular, they started off at Tien from what I understand. I know Marcel then furthered it and Philippe has taken it even further. Here's Philippe, the third generation currently running the winery. They never meant to set out to make just a cash flow wine. And as you probably know, most Cotes du Rhone Red is made, a lot of it at co-ops and some small domains, but the negotians take a big part of it. And they want to turn it before the next vintage, not only to make room in the cellar, but it just creates cash flow for the entire operation. The Guigals never did that. They wanted to make a wine that stood above what else was out there. They were, of course, purchasing from growers. And this is why they taste so many different wines. And they don't use wine from co-ops. They only buy from small growers. Each vintage of this is created from scratch. And to characterize the vintage, and I made the mistake, because I've asked Marceau Guigal many stupid questions in my time. One of them was, what's the most difficult wine for you to make? He looks at me, funny, he always does. And he said, well, and I expected, it's going to be La Landon or La Marlene, because those are steep hillside vineyards that are very hard to work. And he goes, no, it's the Cote du Rhone. Looking at me like, that's obvious. Well, he doesn't have to pick the grapes, so. He doesn't have to pick the grapes. But he said, every year, I have to get engaged on what the vintage is. I taste many, many wines. I have to see if the quality value ratio is there. And if it's not there, if he doesn't think that what's being asked for the bulk wine is up to the quality, he won't make it at all, which is a huge financial loss for the company. He said, and the other problem, and this is a problem, this is difficult. I have to make it better every year. And they also use a selection of crews. So you'll see Lirac, Vacheras, Caran, and Gigandas in the brand also. And so the DNA in this wine is belied by the simple regional appellation. I have an outsiders wine question here. You mentioned with the Blanc that they're buying already fermented wines, but then it's cellaring and aging further in their own cellars. Do they do the same thing with the Rouge? The Rouge is done exactly the same way in their cellars, except whereas the white is mostly kept in stainless steel. The red is aged in large wood fooders as well as some stainless steel, but the difference between this and most Cote du Rhone Reds on the market is that this has aged for a minimum of two years in the cellar before it's bottled. Yeah. A couple of things I would point out is if you pay attention to the shelf set at Binny's for Cote du Rhone, this is always one of the latest releases. It's always lagging behind everyone else, but that's all to the benefit of the consumer, in my opinion. Secondly, I think that high proportion of Syrah really makes itself known in here, just the way the Vionier does. This is both meaty and floral at the same time. It's really gorgeous. It has beautiful color. It's a great wine. Yeah. For the price, I mean, it's just a knockout. As I've said many times and proven a few times to some people who were skeptical, I said, it can age. Not that you need to, but I had a group of master sommeliers at a dinner a few years ago and they said, bring up one blind wine. And we had several older Cote Roties and some fabulous wines. And I brought one wine to serve blind. And everyone picked it as the wine of the night. Several people said it was an old vintage of La Landon. And when I opened it up, it was a 98 Cote de Rhone Red. And I had a lot of people really kind of pissed off at me that night. Master sommeliers don't like to be embarrassed like that. Yeah. You really can pick up the extra aging that you've done for the consumer here because one criticism of Cote du Rhone Red can just be, they're fruity and simple. Not a bad thing. But here, because of that time and the Syrah, you do get so much more complexity and just, again, more kind of texture, I think, to the wine than you'd have and a longer finish. So again, crowd pleaser, but also one that a wine aficionado and a novice would kind of both enjoy. So, we'll come back down to the Southern Rhone, but let's go back up north and have our last white wine. And we are gonna have your Condrieu from the 2019 vintage. And you mentioned kind of how much wine from Condrieu you vinify. And I looked up and it's 45% of wine coming out of this appellation has been by the Guigals. So, it's pretty incredible. Is this a small appellation? Very small. Very, very small. These wines are rare and... I can't say I've ever had a Condrieu before. So, this is gonna be all Viognier. And so, yeah, tell us kind of what makes this appellation so special. And I think perhaps how this expression of Viognier differentiates itself from others around the world that maybe some people have maybe gotten into, but haven't gone up yet to kind of the creme de la creme here. Well, Viognier is kind of a new worldwide phenomenon in a sense. And it goes back, Condrieu is the ancestral home of the Scrape Riding. We don't know where it came from genetically before that. Some people say it might have been Middle East or Italy. As recently as 1965, Condrieu had dwindled to about 15 acres producing. And that was the only Viognier left in the world. And there were two people, George Verne, of course, who has an estate there, and Marcel Guigal took an interest in this grape variety and in this appellation and began to encourage growers to sort of replant and to revivify, if you will, their vineyards so they could sell him grapes to make. He makes all this, by the way, in-house. This is not purchased as wine. It's purchased as grapes. And slowly but surely, the appellation was rebuilt, really saved from extinction by those two wine-making personalities. What makes Condrieu such an interesting area for Viognier is that the Viognier has a really narrow window as a grape variety for getting the varietal character, the popping, you know, jackfruit, as you mentioned, and in the nose and the very tropical character without accumulating too much sugar when turned into alcohol. So and that's what you see in a lot of other parts of the world is a Viognier where one winemaker in California used to tell me, he said, I have to get Viognier to 15.5% alcohol to get it to the point where it expresses the character of the grape. So this area has the perfect balance for the richness in the wine and the expression of the grape variety. It's a lot of granite soil with some sand and a lot of terraces very much like Cote Rotie, so very difficult to farm. Viognier is also a degenerate grape, meaning that generationally it tends to get weaker as you propagate the wood. It also tends to be very heavily virused, et cetera, et cetera. It's not a fun grape to grow. Marcel Guigal once said to me, he said, you want to kill a Viognier vine? Just look at it. And so it's really an exotic specialty. The appellation is quite small. There are only about 320 acres are producing currently. And the yields are very low, usually one and a quarter to one and a half tons per acre. So that's the combination, the difficulty of farming, the low yields and so forth, they all contribute to the price of the wine, which is always on the level of 75 to $100 a bottle. And there are lots of different styles, depending upon who's making it, of course. Guigal style, I think of it right down the middle, it's about two thirds fermented in stainless steel and one third in fermented in new barrels to give it a little bit of sheen. But otherwise, you really don't need to elaborate too much on the, because the grape variety is gonna do most of the talking for you. It's so tropical, and I love that, like, bit of white flower kind of character in there. This is great. Yeah, as someone who's been accused of being a degenerate wine drinker, I think this wine is right up my alley. It's delightful, you know, it has just the barest hint, or maybe it's just all fruitiness, but the bare hint of residual sugar, perhaps, and that just really lifts that tropical nature into the next level. What do we sell this for? This is $59.99. Wow, we're on the low end. Now, is this, this is low production though. Do we have this in many stores? It'll be in a good amount of stores. Yeah, this isn't, this is not just like a five, six store wine. So, you can definitely find this around. Fortunately, the Guigal name has become a household one for many. So, we do try and make sure people have access to these. Vionier is not something that a lot of people recommend aging for a long time, but I think those can take a little time. It can age rather nicely. What happens though with the fruit is it doesn't, it really doesn't improve like some bottles. It doesn't transform like some great varieties. It just, it tends to get a little quieter. And most, I think one of the most interesting things about Condrieu is that the fruit is so in your face, you know, right out of the glass initially. But the minerality in the soil usually makes a wine that if you do age it for 20 years, you do have very interesting wine. It's just not what you had initially, which is fine. Yeah, I was thinking more after about five years, I feel like there's a good crossover between that primary fruit richness and integration of the oak in Dorian. Yeah, that's particularly true of that bottling. We'll move on to the next wine in our glass, but we've been throwing out kind of estate and negotiate. And can you just explain in kind of basic terms for our listeners, kind of what the difference is here? And me, yeah. And Pat, yeah. What the difference from your estate line to your negotiate line and kind of, you know, what came first, maybe a percentage of your production that's negotiate, say, compared to estate lines? The percentage is the predominant amount of Guigal's production is merchant wines. And so they are officially a proprietary negotiate, meaning a proprietor that owns vineyards and negotiate a merchant in French. Much of their production is also Southern Rhone in the North, which is a much smaller production for them and for everybody. I would say it's about at this point, about 85 percent merchant wine, maybe a little bit less than that. Now that they have purchased a property in Chateauneuf du Pape, which I don't think we're tasting today, but Chateau de Nulles, they actually have a footprint in the South. But prior to that, everything and continually now, the other bottlings from the South are all merchant wines. So, Gigandasse and the three Cotes du Rhone, and they make a beautiful Tavel, Rosé as well. And the merchant wines in the North are a combination of estate fruit very often, as well as purchased fruit. So for example, Cote Rotie is about 70 percent from the growers that they work with and the balances from vineyards that they own. And that's just that what goes into what we call the classique bottling, which is the Cote Rotie Brune et Blonde de Guigal. And the same Hermitage under the classique label is 100 percent merchant wine, except for what they purchase, what they use from their vineyard ex voto and vintages that don't produce that, the state wine. They are very, very careful, very selective in all their wines in terms of what goes into them. They really want them to be very authentic. If you're going to go to the trouble of making an Hermitage versus a Cote Rotie, which are both, I know, close to 100% Seurat, if you can't delineate the differences between them, what's the point? So that's there. Well, I have a ton of questions. Shocking. I'm just curious, being so instrumental in bringing Vionier to the south, were those cuttings brought from Condrieu to the Southern Rhone or where were those sourced? That's mostly, that's all they had. Yeah. Essentially, if you go back, if you want to do the detective work, all the Vionier out there in the world. Everything comes from Condrieu. Yeah. Australia, Santa Barbara, doesn't matter. Italy and so forth. The big breakthrough with Vionier was the fact that you get heat treated wood at Davis. They pioneered that program, so you eradicate the virus. Right. They had a lot of leaf roll virus and so forth that was cutting down the yields even further. Some people don't hate that though because of that, cutting down of the yields. A little virus infection every now and then isn't the worst thing. Well, if you're going from, if it takes it from six tons to four tons, that's fine. If it takes it from two tons to one, yeah. Says the guy who's not financially impacted by the devastation of the leaf roll virus. I'm financially impacted by the price of the bottle though. Very true, very true. So we're still in the North here, and we're gonna look at kind of some more affordable crews, I would say here. And in your glass on the left, we have your 2019 Crozer Métage. This is a 26.99 on the shelf. And let's compare that then to the Saint Joseph at 39.99. Love to know kind of just winemaking approach on both of them, but also kind of help us understand stylistically, how would you just break down these two crews? What can customers expect from Crozer Métage and Saint Joseph? Well, that's a very good question. First of all, I would consider both of these Appalachians, Crozer Métage and Saint Joseph to be the best sort of introductory wines if you are looking to see what the character of Northern Rome's Syrah is like. It's different than any other Syrah in the world. It's cool climate Syrah planted on predominantly granite soils. So it gives it a certain smoky mineral character, which you don't find in too many other bottlings around the world. The Appalachians are very different, however. Crozer Métage is by far the best known in this country. It is the slightly larger than Saint Joseph, although it will surprise a lot of people that Saint Joseph is almost as large as Crows, and they're both the largest. The two of them are by far the largest AOCs in the Northern Rhone. Crows Hermitage is located on the east bank on the east side of the Rhone River and takes its name from the town of Tannel Hermitage. And there is a town of Crows also, to which Hermitage is appended. It's a bifurcated region, meaning that there is a parcel of exceptionally good communes in the north, cuddled around the Hill of Hermitage, which is a big block of granite. That would be Gervain and Mercurel, Larnage and Crows itself. And then there's a large swath of vineyard planted much later in the south, on the plain de Chassie, south of Tannel Hermitage, still on the east bank of the river, which were used to be just fruit orchards. And it's sandy, low soil, not very interesting. And it produces sort of so-so. There's a lot of wine and Crows was very popular through the 60s, 70s and 80s in this country. So you saw a lot of it. And it's familiar to people. And people ask me all the time, why did Guigal wait until 1999 to produce a Crows? Even when, because he was working with some growers in Hermitage that had vineyards in Crows. He could have easily done that. He said, I waited until I had access to vineyards that were planted on granite, not on the sandy, low soils. And he said, I want to make a Crows that really is a very similar to Cote Rotie in terms of its expression of Seurat. And that's what he's done. So these are all from granite terraces of the, so it's in the sense that's, it's sort of a mini-Hermitage in that regard in terms of the character of the wine. And I think that's an important distinction, as you mentioned, because of the size of these appellations, you can get variation in quality. And I think Saint Joseph was even expanded at some point. Obviously it had some controversial opinions, but in the glass, when I'm kind of comparing the two wines, I'd love to get kind of just overall thoughts on kind of the differences here. And I find that the Saint Joseph comes across just on the nose to be the more savory expression, the more olive-y kind of meaty one. And then I'm getting some more of that kind of deep fruit and black pepper and that on the, and a little spice on the crows. Those are very, very apt descriptions. The crows, I tend to get what I think of as white pepper, because I have a sort of conceit when I taste these wines that I can smell the granite, which is probably not true, but that's how it smells to me, sort of white pepper. And the Saint Joseph, it's on the other side of the river. It's a very different layout of vineyards, although there's a lot of granite involved too. There's a lot of decomposed granite and sand. It gives the more of the sauvage, meaty character to the Syrah than you're getting in the crows on the other side of the river. You're right, the Saint Joseph was first essentially established in 1956 as its own appellation. It was only the towns right around Roche de Gond and so forth around Tournon that were given the right to the appellation. I think there were just six communes, all with granite terraces, interestingly enough. And then as it got expanded 40 miles up the river till it was a butted, overlapped convier in 1969 when it was redrawn and so forth. There's a lot of controversy with that. Basically, Guigal uses only vineyards up to about five miles north of the town of Tournon when they're still on granite. Not only that, Guigal owns the original Saint Joseph plot, right? A good portion of it, yes. And further north from there in the town of Tournon itself, Guigal did purchase from two domains, what is now called the Vignes de l'Esprit, which is interesting in that it is a very limited but also spectacular Saint Joseph that they make in the style of their single vignes de cote roties. It's on the West Bank, but it's planted on the same granite soil series as the Hill of Hermitage itself, because it was once part of that same piece of rock. Just divided by the river now. Exactly. I don't think you can overstate what an imposing presence Hermitage is in the area. It's such an interesting, just like huge jutting piece of granite. Well, it stands, it's a monument. If you're down river or river from it, particularly if you're down south of there, it just looks like this luminous, especially at sunset, this luminous jewel above the river. And it's an interesting appellation. It's almost entirely granite. It was actually a piece of igneous rock that was forced up to change the course of the Rhone River at the time, 10 million years ago. So geologists tell us. And eventually the river worked its way back through, but it's really limited. There are only 309 plantable acres in the entire appellation, so it can't be expanded. Whereas Cote Rotie, there are over 800 acres within the established borders of that appellation, and people are busy trying to expand a little bit north through that. It's only about half planted right now, but Hermitage can't go anywhere. It is what it is, right? I did not know that about Cote Rotie and the planting kind of potential that the crew still has. But speaking of kind of changing the course, I do want to talk about just the Guigals, especially Etienne Guigal in particular, and then his sons, but the impact they've had in the Rhone, because there was a time that we questioned kind of what was the future of this region, especially up north. And we're now seeing collectors, auction houses go after some of these kind of top wines. And finding quality for still very high prices. But when you compare it to some other regions in the world, I think the wines coming out are so beautiful. So they're getting into that space, but also they really helped kind of, I don't know, just change the trajectory of this region. How do you think they did that? And when did that happen? If when Etienne started his business in 1946, nobody knew what Cote Rotie was. I mean, there was a market for it, I think in the 19th century, but for the most part, it was more abundant. Vineyards were being allowed to go to seed. It's a very hard area to work. Terraces that are up to 50 to 60 degrees of slope that have to be rebuilt every year because of erosion. It's almost an impossible task when you think of it. Now, if you're not making much money on the wine you're growing there, what are you doing? In the early part of the 20th century, fruit trees are more important on those hillsides than grapes. So Etienne was, he started buying good parcels, good plots of vineyard in Cote Rotie in the 40s and 50s. They were very cheap. Marcel, when he took over, essentially came on board with his father, continued that, he saw the value in these vineyards, saw the potential. I think there's nothing, it's hard to imagine that somebody not seeing that, if you see these vineyards up above you, that they're really quite imposing. But to see that potential, this also takes a certain amount of financial, sort of fingers crossed and so on. But Marcel is a great businessman and a very forward thinking guy. He really, I think, encapsulated what he thought Cote Rotie could do and began to expand on that potential. First, buying in 1963 from Madame d'Hervier, he bought the parcel of Cote Rotie that's now called La Mouline. And then later on, he assembled from 17 parcels, La Landonne, which is another icon wine. And then most recently, La Turque. Marcel was responsible for resuscitating the aging of these wines in newish oak, new or newish oak. It was a 19th century tradition, but it fell out of favor when economics didn't favor that region in the first part, first half of the 20th century. So I think it was a combination of things. I think Marcel is, if anyone is probably the most responsible for saving that appellation because they were more recently, they were going to put an auto route through there and destroy some vineyards. Marcel got that stopped. They were going to tear out vineyards and put in condos, beautiful sight for a condo overlooking the river, right? So, he basically, he was responsible for essentially defending these vineyards and building them back to the quality level potential that they have now. Yeah, I don't think you're going to overstate the impact of that return to the use of New Oak and now even in-house cooperage, right? Correct. They have a cooper that's a gentleman from Chassee in Burgundy. Pat, what are your thoughts? I think I like the Saint Joseph a little better. It's just a little, I like the structure on it a little more. They're both gorgeous, of course. Interesting that you pointed out that meatier character on it. If you had just told that to me before I tasted them, I would assume I wouldn't like that one as much. But I think it's a little more structured and I really like that. Awesome. The aging is about the same on both. They use a combination of large food and first and second year fill barrels, but not a lot of New Oak in this. These are really meant to focus on the fruit. I think most people would, St. Joseph is very popular in France, especially around Lyon, where it's close to, and I think most people consider it a little finer wine, a little more interesting. Is there a regional cuisine we would pair with this wine? Yes. There's a wonderful cuisine that's hard to describe. It's Sauces en Lyonnais. They make a large sausage and they actually have a dish that they put it in. It's actually shaped sort of a pig. It has a pig's head and a pig's tail on the other end. You put the sausages in the middle and it's the sausage that's made from all parts of the pig. So you'll occasionally run into a little nub of an ear or nose or whatever else, but it's a local delicacy and it works wonderfully with these wines. Some pig ear with your sausage. It's Sausage, what? Sauces en Lyonnais. En Lyonnais. Like Salad Lyonnais, you know? It's everything's name for Lyon because it's the gastronomic heart of everything. Of the world, yes. It's a classic example of it's better not to know how the sausage is made. Yeah. I don't know about that. I would just say too, just with the price points on these, again, we're talking Northern Rome prices, so I appreciate that it's all in context. But these are two that actually it's nice to show both. If you're having a party, because they are showing Seurat so differently, knowing the wine making is actually similar to just show off these two crews. It's really cool side by side, and it's reasonably priced. Exactly. It helps people understand the different expressions, and you'll get two different audiences for the wines. I think you'll find probably an even split in the room, depending on where people are at. So fun showing. That's the Croze Hermitage and the Saint Joseph. I do wanna kind of continue on in our tasting journey here. I am curious as we pour the next wines, we talked about how as a merchant that dominates your production, but for your estate stuff, you only own, or Guigal only owns what? 150 acres or so. That's about right. Not a lot. And so, you know, is he, is Philippe looking right now for more land? What, does he just kind of wait for the right piece to come up? Is there, is there a specific crew that is kind of really hot right now that everyone's talking about you want to get into for, for estate production? I think you have to understand a little bit about, in the northern part, particularly how limited the vineyards are for the most part, or the best vineyards. And for example, in Hermitage, they would have loved to have purchased some acreage in Hermitage from the very beginning. It's just that that was next to impossible, given the small quantity of vineyard there in any case, as well as the fact that the growers are very, you know, like Chauvin and Chaputier, they're not selling. And so, it took a... Chappelle is not up for sale? Well, actually, they did sell a part of that property, I believe, at one point. It's not impossible. Not impossible, but for Guigal, it took Marcel and his father nearly 20 years to find a source for Hermitage vineyards. And it was in 2000 and 2001, they bought the Domaine de Vallouy, through which they acquired two hectares of Hermitage on four parcels. And then also then almost quickly after that, I mean, Jean-Louis Griepa, who was a legend in France, they acquired his domain too. And that's where they acquired most of their Saint Joseph in the process. Through those two large purchases, they acquired only four hectares, which is 10 acres of a vineyard in Hermitage. And that's probably where they're going to sit unless something happens to fall on their lap. I know that they would be happy to buy and are buying additional granite-based vineyards and crows. That would be a nice, and I'd love to see an estate bottle of crows from them at some point, or a selection parcel there that would be interesting. For Saint Joseph, they have some of the best vineyards already in the Appalachian. I think they would expand there. But I think, to be honest, what they're working on most now is Cote Rotie. You asked about the plantings in Cote Rotie, and there are three communes there. And the southernmost one is, since we're getting into the Cote Rotie here shortly, the southern one is Dupin Simon, and it's just a contiguous, it runs right into Condrieu to the south. The sweet spot in the middle is Ampouille. That's the commune where most of the very famous vineyards are located. And sort of an afterthought is St. Cyr, which is to the north and it wraps around the corner of the river to the west a little bit. And that's always been a cooler climate. And it's been harder to ripen Seurat there until what we have is, what they call it, climate change or global warming or whatever. And now they're finding that that actually is a very good area for growing. So the Guigals purchased a beautiful parcel there. They're actually clearing the lands within the Appalachian Cote Rotie. And they planted a vineyard there. Probably won't see any additional from that property. And it'll go into their Classic Cuvée, but it'll probably be two or three more years for those vines produced. But they are looking up there. Very cool. So that would have a more northerly exposure in St. Cyr. Yes. As opposed to east-facing slopes. Well, most of the good vineyards of good vineyard sites are east-facing, but it does wrap a little bit to the north. Probably you won't see anything planted facing north. Although there are vineyards in Cote Rotie that face due north. There's northerly-facing vineyards though in Cote Rotie. I'm assuming mostly going into blends with other sites, you wouldn't do like a single vineyard from there, just it would be slightly too austere. Most of the single vineyard wines you see have an east or south-east exposure. To put their estate business in perspective with the overall business, how many cases does Guigal sell annually? I mean, they're very large, right? Well, their negotiation of business is quite large. Their production of Cote du Rhone Rouge is substantial. It's more than two-thirds of their overall business. They have a great demand for it. They produce that much and they can't even keep it in supply for a year. But their production of their estate wines is quite limited. The nice thing about Guigal Cote Rotie and Condrieu is you can get them year-round for the most part. It's not just like, oh, it came into the market and I missed it. So, you can find it, which is a real luxury for these Appalachians. Can we trust that this is actually a Chateauneuf without the embossed label? It's not an estate wine as well. Do they do it? They actually have to have that on the bottle, right? Correct. If it's an estate bottle. The backstory with the estate wines is with estate wines and in Chateauneuf, is there two consortiums in Chateauneuf du Pape, so Vintner's associations. If you belong to one or the other, you can use different bottles. Each one has a different bottle associated. The original one has the Ecoussaint, the crossed keys, and the newer one has, you'll see it on your shelves, I'm sure, has the Papal Meter. The major. Yeah. That's a different consortium. But estate bottled wines don't have to use one of those bottles. But if you are bottling as a negotiation, you can't. You can not. Because it has to be bottled in the cellars at your estate. Yeah. And really brief. What a hilarious rule. Tidbit card. It's so French. It's so French. A little tidbit here for our listeners. Patrick actually is one of very few people, I'm sure there are just like a couple hundred, I think, in the world, right, that have a key to the city. Correct. I've never tried to let myself in. I mean, that's weird. I've just walked in there before. Exactly. So, is it a key to the city of Chateauneuf du Pape, yes? I was inducted into the Brotherhood of Chateauneuf du Pape back in 2008. Yeah. How many Americans? That's a good question. There's three or four. I don't think there's a lot. What secret rituals could you share? Oh, I have pictures, but what they made me do is to get up and speak a few words in French, and then it was all very jovial. They gave me two glasses of wine and I was in front of 400 people and underneath the Chateau of Chateauneuf du Pape, there was actually a beautiful ballroom under there that wasn't bombed out during World War II. It's an ancient medieval place, stone walls and so on. I had to stand up in front of them and describe each of the wines in French. I had to tell which one was Chateauneuf du Pape. Fortunately, the one that wasn't was horrid. So, I would have been... They were throwing you a softball. I succeeded and I have a key to the city and it was, but I had to put on robes and so forth. It was all very interesting and traditional. And you have a secret handshake that rivals that of most NBA teams, I assume. Probably. Actually, I don't have a secret handshake. We have a secret way of putting the corkscrew in the bottle and pulling out the corkscrew. Can I ask, was there a banquet involved and what kind of foods were served there? Very traditional Southern round foods. We had the pike canal and those are really good. I just brought those up not that long ago and everyone looked at me like I was nuts. No, I was all in on that. I mean, it's the only good way to serve that fish anyway. So it's my opinion. I fried up some good pike earlier this summer. Okay, I want to get into the Chateauneuf because it smells so amazing. So this is Guigal's 2017 Chateauneuf du Pape that we have in our glass that is on our shelf right now for $52.99. And Patrick, what is in this wine? How is it made? And then as we transition into Cote Rotie and Chris peppers you with questions about that and the Brune et Blonde, how does a winemaker look at Grenache based blends compared to all of that Syrah North? Well, the Syrah is of course more comfortable for the Guigals. That's what they're familiar with really in their vineyards in terms of their own viticulture. But Chateauneuf du Pape has been an extremely important part of the merchant business in France because it was a recognizable name. Every wine listing practically in France and in the UK and Denmark. So it has a Chateauneuf du Pape on the list. So every merchant, whether it's B&G or Guigal was making a Negotiation Chateauneuf du Pape. So it's sort of essential part of your repertoire. And it's also a big Appalachian, the largest crew in the Rhone. So there's plenty of wine. And the basis of it, and Marcel always holds by this as far as merchant wine, is it should be Old Vines Grenache. So Old Vines Grenache is really the DNA behind Chateauneuf du Pape. And that's really what gives it the character. And that is what informs this particular bottling every year. It's 70 to 80, even 85%. They buy from about 25 growers, many of whom bottle the wines under their own labels. Some extraordinarily good vineyards go into this. They're names that you would recognize. I had a tour one time when I tell one story out of school a little bit. But Marcel, a certain wine writer, had been very complimentary about the Guigal Chateauneuf du Pape and then one year he wasn't. He said the reason that this isn't as good is because he doesn't have access to his good vineyards, good growers as he used to because they're bottling on their own now, which this wine writer took to be that was partly something he had done encouraging them. And Marcel was incensed by this comment and he took me on a tour of the cellars and he identified each cask, each footer as to where it was sourced. And it was a murderer's row of people we know in Chateauneuf du Pape and it still is. And so he has great sources. He sticks to his old vine Grenache approach. Once you get above the Cote du Rhone level, he likes to age as the wine wants to age. So you'll see sometimes these are released in two years and sometimes after four and would. And he says at the 17 lasted a long time because he said he didn't want to release it too early. In 2004, for example, four full years and would before it was bottled. He said. Wow. Large and old, I'm assuming. Not new. No, they're footers. There's very little new oak on these wines. Marcel was quoted as saying and said it to me directly also. He said, wine is like cheese. He said, let me give you the example of common bear. You don't want to buy a common bear that's so young. You can play hockey with it. You want a common bear that's a bit runny, as John Cleese says, so the same thing with wine. He says, I want to get the wine mature before it goes in the bottle, at least halfway to drinkability. That's his approach. As I recall, John Cleese had a very, I said John, like he was French or something, a very difficult time acquiring common bear. Well, that's a whole another skit which we could go into. That's one of the first things I do when I go to Europe any time is get an actual real Camembert because everything here gets pasteurized. It's the only way to go. Yeah. Most Americans eat that just so young, so hard, so without flavor. And they think it's such a bland cheese. Nobody even realizes that it's not, it can't even legally be called Camembert. What an amazing cheese though when you're eating a raw milk. It's nice and ripe and it's stayed out for a long time. So aromatic. Sorry. You can always say that you get the real Camembert here, you're getting the real wine in a sense. Yeah. I would agree with that. I think this is very classic Chateauneuf du Pape. It's not a more modern style where there's just over-the-top cherry fruit in your face. This is layers of herb and olive and all kinds of interesting things going on here. It was just a little background for our listeners. Some of you may remember that in 2002, the Wine Spectator chose the 1999 Guigal Classique Chateauneuf du Pape, that's all they produced, as the number one wine in the top 100. That really took them from one level to another as far as their interest in the appellation, and it kicked off their search for a property there. 20 years later, almost 20 years later, they finally landed on Domaine Denali's, which is now Chateauneuf Denali's. They have that big really high-quality footprint now in the Southern Rhone. So they're in it up to their necks, if you will, but they're loving it. But this classic style will always continue and will stay the same. And is this in an area with lots of galet? What's the soil type like? Denali's is blessed. It's on the highest plateau of Chateauneuf du Pape where you have the vineyards of Piedlong. They purchased an addition, but it's a Bois Saint-Euchel and a liardier called Grandpierre, which is the sandy soil that also informs the wines of Reyes, which is now a collector's item only, I guess. And then the bulk of the property was in La Croix. And that's the vineyard that is famously on the Via Telegraph label. And it's arguably the best soil and in Chateauneuf du Pape. And it is absolutely a sea of galet relays, the big river stones. Yeah, indeed. I think the quality of the earth, not quality, but the style of wines is very different. Like, Reas is so elegant in that lighter soil, you know, and La Croix tends to make richer wines. There's more clay and what they call saffron. And it's a certain kind of clay that has a lot of limestone mixed in it. It's all calcareous clay and it really makes a very rough and tumble granache and beautiful wines. Chateauneuf du Pape, to hear some of the people describe it there, one well-known winemaker said to me one time, he says, we don't know our soil here at all. We just plant grapes and we have the permitted grape varieties and we're learning it. And Philippe took me around the vineyards one day. I spent about eight hours just going from Liudide to Liudide in a car that could barely run and bounced around at No Shock Absorbers. And he said, this is really the Wild West. And I said, yes, I'm getting a little saddlesore here in this car. Was this an old Peugeot or something? Something like that. Just one step up from a Doucha. I want to end where it all began for the Guigals. And we have the 2018 Cote Rotie Brune et Blonde in our class. And this tale of generations from Etienne to Marcel to Philippe. My question for you as we go into this wine is, is has their winemaking approach changed at all with these three generations? And with that, tell us a little bit about how they handle Syrah. What is now become the Guigal signature, if you will? Well, I think it has been an evolution since Etienne was first making Cote Rotie, which we know he did. There are vintages we have from the 50s. And my ex-business partner, Seller, he still has a nice massive library of Guigal. And they're wonderful wines, but they're very much in a different style than what you have here. But has always remained the same as their interest in expressing the terroir, if you will. And that's an overused term, but they're interested in really saying, we're going to make Cote Rotie, we're going to make it very typically. And their use of new barrels has been a little controversial. A lot of people say you shouldn't use new oak, but on the other hand, if you have the concentration in the wine itself, it won't be over-oaked. As we say in the production side of things, wines aren't really over-oaked, they're just under-wined. And here you have a wine that can stand up to a lot of oak treatment. The oak treatment is not meant to change things, it's meant to enhance and complement what is already there. But I think the evolution that I described has been from using larger wood. For example, La Maline 1966, the first vintage of that famous wine was aged only in food. It wasn't until the early 70s they started using small barrels, meaning 219 liter barrels and then new ones. But that has been a sort of a gradual evolution. And the Brune et Blonde, which we have in the glass here, has also gone through that evolution. It used to be in the 80s and 90s, it would be used, aged in older wood and in large footer. And in the last 20 years or so, they've moved more toward entirely a pièce, which is a smaller wood barrel. They make them on property and they've moved from about 15 to 20% new to 50% new in wine. They did that in 2005 when it was a vintage that was so concentrated that Philippe said, we kept barreling down and tasting the wine after it had been in a barrel for a couple of days and it just ate the oak alive. So they kept using more and re-woken it. It's a nice compliment, but it has been an evolution along the way. What has not changed is their respect for what the vineyards give them. And this wine has so much life in it and is still so intense. We just have the 2018 vintage now four years old and you can really get a sense of how these wines can age because the acid, the tannic, the fruit, the savor components, everything is really yumped up, but yet balanced and you can just only imagine It takes the oak incredibly well. It's not flashy in oak, but the wine subsumes the oak in a lot of ways, but it is a nice compliment and the nose is just gorgeous. I mean, it's so pretty. Well, there aren't sorrows like this really anywhere else in the world and that's what makes these vineyards so wonderful and I think what Marcel and his father saw in the potential of these vineyards that was unrealized at the time was clearly this potential here you have in the glass. There is about 4% Viognier in these wines and I don't know if you know the Caillou de Charges, I'm sorry, the rules and regs of the Appalachian Cote Rotie allow for up to 20% of Viognier to be in the blend. Traditionally, now nobody really does that much. Some use as much as 11% or 12%. But the Viognier has to be inter-planted in the vineyard, it has to be harvested at the same time and co-fermented. So it all has to go in hand to hand. Well, two out of the three LaLas have a significant proportion of Viognier, right? 7% for Latourque, 11% for LaMouline and none for Lalla. None at all, yeah. And that's really, I mean, you get kind of color stabilization, right? And then that aromatic kind of lift, right? That the Viognier brings. Yeah, oddly enough, and it's a chemistry that nobody's really figured out yet, but adding the white wine to the red will actually help stabilize the color and after deepens it. Of course, it's been traditional throughout Europe prior to temperature control and prior to closed top fermenters to use a little white grape, a little white wine. And Chianti, for example, because it made up for the aromatics that were blown off during open top fermenters fermentation. And so this tradition has stayed on, whereas Chianti Classico has basically obviated the need for Arganega and Malvasia. Yeah. So this year is $79.99 on the shelf. Not bad. Very, very pretty wine. I'm all over that. The wines age magnificently, by the way. I did have my ex-business partner with the big wine library, sent me some half bottles of 64 Cote Rotie and they're still beautiful. And the wine does age quite well. So it's one of those wines that you can enjoy in its youth. But if you forget some in your cellar, it's not going to be a problem. Let's just find it. Even back then, were they sourcing both from the Cote Brune and Cote Blonde for this bottling, unlike the single vineyards where they're, you know, particularly Cote Brune? Quick note on the Brunet Blonde. Both of the Cote Brune and the Cote Blonde are colloquial appellations, if you will, colloquial names. They come from two liodies. One is the Cote Blonde, the other one is the Cote Brune. They're individual vineyard sites. It turns out that there's a stream called La Reynard, which divides the vineyards of the Commune of Ampouille, sort of divides the north and south. The Cote Blonde is located on the south side, the Cote Brune on the north side. It turns out the soil types are quite different. I mean, you have a lot more quartzite, sand, a little limestone on the south, along with some granite and schist. On the north, you have almost predominantly dark schist, and a lot of iron oxide, ferrous oxide. And darker soils on the north side, lighter soils on the south. So that the Cote Blonde and the Cote Brune gave their names colloquially to those two different sectors. And they're all within the commune of Ampouille, which is again, as I said, the sweet spot for all of this. And how would you say those soil types affect the resulting fruit? If you have a Cote Blonde on its own, for example, their Rustang makes one, they're very pretty aromatics, very floral, expressive. The wines that are grown on, Syrah grown on schist, which is most of the Cote Brune and further north, tend to have a lot of tannin, a lot of smoke. That's where people say that you get bacon fat, which is mostly the oak, but you get a smokiness to the Syrah. That's really from, I believe it's from the schist. Yeah, I completely agree with that characterization. Well, this has been quite the tour through the Rhone, north and south, through one of the most esteemed producers. And Patrick, I just want to thank you for your time. It's been a pleasure. Any last words, future of Guigal under Philippe's, I know he's still working with Marcel, but Philippe's helping you. Well, yes, his father, Philippe and his father work together closely in the winery, and it's a very good team. It's amazing. I think a couple of things to look for, you know, for the collectors out there, there will be a fourth Crew Cote Rotie, a fourth Lala, so to speak, called La Renard. I misspoke, the stream is called Le Renard, because it's a masculine noun in French, but called La Renard. It's actually going to be, it's from the Liadit Fonjon, which is a very famous liadit in the Cote Brune. That will probably come out in 2026. The Vintage 22 is going to be the inaugural vintage for that. Is this fruit they're already using in other bottlings, and will it be including Vionier or not? They planted this vineyard. This was a portion of Fonjon that was on Friche, in other words, it was just with bushes and so forth. So they cleared it and planted it. It's a solid piece of granite. It's rather remarkable. It's right next to La Turque. It's about 100 yards to the west of La Turque. So it's the same type of soil series. So Cote Brune. Yeah, Cote Brune and no Vionier. They will also identify that with 100% stems like La London. So the analogy will be closer to La London than anything else in their portfolio. Well, we will set our calendar reminders. 2026 coming your way. Mine's already there. The one thing that I'm really looking forward to seeing how they progress is Chateauneuf du Pape. Not least because, boy, it's nothing but blue sky there. They have some of the best vineyards in the Appalachian, and they're just getting their feet under them there, making the wines and they've already been received so incredibly well by the press. It's going to be interesting to see what goes down, down the road. One comment about the wines, aside from that, it's a real pleasure tasting with all of you and to be here, an honor for me and I always learn something every time. I have a pleasure of going through these kinds of tastings quite frequently. I learn something every time. I learned to appreciate some little nuance of the Saint Joseph that you pointed out or something where they really see how the Cote Rotie is behaving today as opposed to three days ago. It's an interesting experience, always worthwhile to go through these wines and to have them and to get to know them. The Rhone has just been on a hot streak of vintages lately, literally. It's been very warm, but the quality has been very high. I would say going back six, seven years, vintage is now at 2022 looking good. 2022 is going to be fantastic. Everything was like in 19 was pretty much perfect for it. They had just a slightly short crop. 21 was very good, but there wasn't very much of it. And it's at 19 and 20, you can speak for themselves now. There are many of them around the market. 18 was a vintage that was hot, and so was 17. Both of them were quite small. And then you have 16, which was classic, and 15 was great. I mean, you can just go on and tick them off one after the other. And we haven't really had a bad vintage in the Rhone since 2002. Yeah. Some hydric stress going on, though, right? We haven't had a bad vintage in 20 years. How many regions would love that? And just, I mean, safe bets for you out there as you buy. You don't need to worry about that question. The Chateauneuf is incredible. Yeah. Lovely stuff. So, Patrick, thanks so much for your time. It's a pleasure, as I said. Go out and dive into the Rhone, folks. Pat, Chris, always a pleasure. Absolutely. I really enjoyed myself today. Thank you very much. Thanks for your time this week. We'll catch you next week with something interesting. Until then, I'm Pat. I'm Alisha. I'm Chris. And I'm Patrick Will, and I'm delighted to have been here with you today. Keep tasting. Podcasts Shows barrel-to-bottle-the-binnys-podcast Guigal Wines with Patrick Will Copyright © 2025 Apple Inc. All rights reserved.Terms of ServicePrivacy PolicyContact UsResources and Help