The Internal Ranking: Why the 2007 is So Special in Tignanello’s History

There exists for Tignanello a quiet, unofficial hierarchy of vintages — a list maintained by critics and collectors alike that separates the great from the truly exceptional. At the very top stand the vintages that prove not merely excellent but epochal: 1985, 2001, 2007, 2009, 2010, 2016, 2018. The 2007 stands in this company not despite its history, but because of it.

A Hot Summer, a Cool August — The Recipe for Perfection

The weather record of 2007 on the Tenuta Tignanello reads like the script of a winemaker inventing their ideal vintage. The spring was early and mild — the flowering proceeded uniformly and completely. The first part of the summer was warm and dry, the grapes developing concentration and phenolic ripeness. Then, in August, the weather cooled — exactly when the Sangiovese needs it most. The day-night temperature differentials preserved aromatic freshness and natural acidity. September was perfect for a slow, selective harvest.

Antinori themselves wrote of the 2007: “The Sangiovese expressed its characteristic varietal aromatic notes and elegance, along with beautiful colour, all of which made it possible to foresee a truly great vintage.”

The Last Vintage of the Old Winery

There is a historical detail about the 2007 Tignanello that distinguishes it from every other vintage: it was the last produced before the comprehensive renovation of the Tignanello winery. A winery that since the first vintage of 1971 had been the cradle of a winemaking revolution — the place where Giacomo Tachis and Piero Antinori had broken the rules and invented the Super Tuscans.

Monica Larner, chief critic for Italy at Wine Advocate, found this context significant: the 2007 was not merely a great wine, but the end of a chapter. What came after — the new winery, the new facilities, the new vintages — was a continuation of the story, but a new page. The 2007 is the last line of the first great paragraph.

Today: A Wine in its Third Dimension

Burgundy lovers speak of the “Plénitudes” — the maturation phases of a great wine. Tignanello lovers need no such terminology, but the concept applies equally. After 18 years, the 2007 has reached its third dimension: the phase where primary fruit fuses with tertiary aromas of tobacco, leather, spice and earth — a complexity that can neither be bought nor accelerated. One can only wait.

And then drink. Now.

Beaucastel Blanc Roussanne Vieilles Vignes: The White Wine Nobody Expected

When the Perrin family decided in 1986 to produce a separate cuvée from their oldest Roussanne vines, the wine world’s reaction was lukewarm. Châteauneuf-du-Pape was a red wine appellation. White wine existed of course — but as a by-product, a curiosity, not as a prestige object. Beaucastel had other plans.

1909: The Vines That Founded a Legend

The story of the Roussanne Vieilles Vignes begins with a date worth remembering: 1909. The year Pierre Tramier acquired Château de Beaucastel and planted the first Roussanne vines on the north-western parcel. Vines that are today over 115 years old. Vines that have survived two world wars, the phylloxera crisis, climate change and five generations of the Perrin family.

These vines do not give much. Yields are minimal — 20 to 25 hectolitres per hectare, a fraction of the permitted maximum. But what they give is of a concentration and depth rarely found elsewhere in the world.

Roussanne: The Most Complex White Grape of the Rhône

Roussanne is not easy. She is sensitive, disease-prone, capricious — a grape that demands much and sometimes gives little. Many producers in Châteauneuf-du-Pape have for this reason reduced or abandoned it entirely. Beaucastel did the opposite: they built their entire prestige white wine upon it.

Why? Because Roussanne, when old and growing on the right terroir, can do something no other white wine from the South of France can do: it ages like a great Burgundy. It develops complexity, depth and nuance over decades. It does not become heavier or flatter — it becomes finer, more precise, more profound.

The galets roulés terroir of Beaucastel gives the Roussanne a mineral tension found only in Hermitage or the Châteauneuf whites of Rayas. The combination of century-old vines, organic farming and ageing in demi-muids with 50% new oak creates a wine that cannot decide whether it wants to be richness or elegance — and ends up being both.

500 Cases. No More.

The production of the Roussanne Vieilles Vignes is limited to around 500 cases per year. Not by marketing calculation, but because the parcel simply gives no more. On the secondary market, mature vintages change hands for 500 CHF and upwards. Buyers on the waiting list wait years.

Jeb Dunnuck called the wine “the Montrachet of the southern Rhône” — a claim that initially surprised the wine world and was then increasingly accepted as accurate. Because what Beaucastel achieves here is without parallel in the South: a Grand Cru-quality white wine from a region known, until a few decades ago, for red wine and nothing else.

2009: The Vintage That Confirms Everything

The 2009 vintage was in the southern Rhône exceptionally warm and opulent — one of the most celebrated of recent decades. For the Roussanne Vieilles Vignes, it was ideal: the natural sweetness of the grape found in 2009 the perfect ripeness, the creamy texture its maximum expression, the minerality of the terroir its deepest voice.

Today, after 15 years, this wine drinks brilliantly. Not because it has reached and passed its peak — but because it has arrived exactly where it was always meant to be. The wine needed time. As everything great does.

Domaine du Clos des Fées: The Sommelier Who Reinvented the Roussillon

In the wine world, there are winemakers who begin with everything. Capital, land, a well-known name, generational heritage. And then there is Hervé Bizeul — a man who started in 1998 in a garage in Vingrau. With nothing but knowledge, passion and the conviction that the Roussillon could do great things.

From Sommelier to Winemaker: A Story That Begins With an Obsession

Hervé Bizeul was not a winemaker. He was a sommelier — one of the finest in France — and a gastronomic critic who for years looked at the world of wine through a glass rather than through a vineyard. He knew wine. He understood wine. He loved wine in the way one only loves what one connects to one’s soul.

In the late 1990s, he moved with his wife Claudine to the Roussillon — a region the wine world then regarded as a bulk production territory. Cheap Grenache, poor soils, extreme heat. No prestigious appellations. No fame. No story the world knew.

That was exactly Bizeul’s plan.

1998: A Garage Winery in Vingrau

The Domaine du Clos des Fées was born literally in the garage of his house in Vingrau — a small village nestled in one of the most rocky and windswept corners of the Roussillon. The first wines came in 1998. The reaction was immediate: critics were astonished. Collectors placed orders. The Roussillon suddenly found itself in the spotlight in a way it had never expected.

Why? Because Bizeul saw what others overlooked. The old vines of this region — Grenache, Carignan, Mourvèdre, planted before mechanisation took hold — grew on soils of incredible complexity: slate, mica-schist, limestone, volcanic rock. Yields were minimal. Concentration was maximal. This was not bulk production. It was the raw material of a great wine that nobody was harvesting.

Bizeul harvested it.

The Parcel Nobody Wanted

La Petite Sibérie is not simply a name. It is a description. The parcel — two hectares on a steep, north-facing slope near Vingrau — sits at an altitude where the Tramontane, the icy north-westerly wind of the Roussillon, blows for 200 days a year. Winters can be harsh. Spring frosts are not uncommon. The previous owner had abandoned the parcel — too demanding, too low-yielding, too uneconomical.

Bizeul saw the Grenache vines growing there — some over 100 years old — on deep argilo-calcaire with layers of red and black iron-rich mica-schist. He bought. And he understood immediately: this parcel does not give an opulent southern wine. It gives something rare — a Roussillon with alpine freshness, with the minerality of slate, with the concentration of century-old vines. A wine that understands coldness as a quality.

The Philosophy: Ambition Without Compromise

The Domaine du Clos des Fées has today grown to around 30 hectares. Seven different terroirs in the Côtes du Roussillon. Wines from Les Sorcières — the accessible entry-level wine — through to La Petite Sibérie and the emblematic Clos des Fées Vieilles Vignes. Bizeul, considered one of the pioneers of “viticulture réelle” and who has kept a blog about his work since the 1990s — open, humorous, sometimes provocative — has put the Roussillon on the international wine map.

But La Petite Sibérie remains his heart. A maximum of 2,000 bottles per year. In some years fewer. In some years none. The Tramontane decides. The vines decide. Bizeul then decides what enters the bottle — and what does not.

That is La Petite Sibérie. Small in quantity. Immense in the glass.

Tenuta dell’Ornellaia: El Dorado by the Tuscan Sea

In the wine world, certain designations stick. “Italy’s First Growth.” “The Lafite of Tuscany.” “El Dorado.” Ornellaia has received all of these names — and none is an exaggeration.

The story does not begin with an estate. It begins with a dream.

1981: A Field Full of Promise

Lodovico Antinori, brother of Piero Antinori of Tignanello fame, was searching in the late 1970s for a site capable of replicating the great Bordeaux blends in Tuscany. He found it on the Tuscan coast — in Bolgheri, a stretch of land the wine world then barely knew, but which already harboured Sassicaia. In 1981, he planted the first Merlot and Cabernet vines on the Tenuta dell’Ornellaia. He brought in one of the world’s greatest oenologists — André Tchelistcheff, the legend who had taught winemaking in Napa Valley like no other. Tchelistcheff visited the estate, tasted the soil, smelled the air — and called the property “El Dorado.”

He was right.

The First Vintage and Immediate Fame

1985 saw the first vintage of Ornellaia. The reaction of the wine world was immediate, overwhelming, unambiguous: this was not an ordinary wine. This was a wine that inaugurated a new era in Bolgheri — more structured than Sassicaia, more opulent than Tignanello, with a softness and accessibility rarely found in the Bordeaux style. Robert Parker was enthusiastic. Jancis Robinson was enthusiastic. The rest of the world followed.

Within a few years, Ornellaia appeared on the wine lists of the world’s finest restaurants. Today it stands at number 5 of the most searched wines on wine-searcher.com in all of Italy — and on the Liv-ex Fine Wine Power 100.

The Frescobaldi Era: Continuity as Philosophy

In 2005, the Frescobaldi family — one of Italy’s oldest and most prestigious wine dynasties, present in Tuscany for 700 years — acquired the majority of Ornellaia. What followed was not a reinvention, but a deepening. Axel Heinz, described by Antonio Galloni as “one of the world’s most in-demand winemakers,” took over direction of the estate and introduced a radical philosophy: each vintage is defined by a single word — the “Vendemmia d’Artista.” This word is interpreted by a contemporary artist who creates a work for the estate’s permanent collection. In 2021, that word is: “Spontaneità.” Spontaneity — the freedom of nature in a perfect year.

Le Volte: Not the Little Brother — the Open Door

Le Volte is not the second wine of Ornellaia — that is Le Serre Nuove. Le Volte is the third wine: conceived to be immediately accessible before the great wines are ready. But in a vintage like 2021, where grape quality was exceptional, Le Volte is more than that. It is the open door into the Ornellaia universe — wider open than ever, with a fullness and depth that led Galloni to speak of “one of the richest Le Voltes I can ever remember tasting.”

In a Magnum, that door is opened twice as wide. And the room behind is larger than expected.

Nicolas Joly et la Coulée de Serrant : L’Homme qui a Rendu son Âme au Vin

Il y a des vignerons qui font du vin. Il y a des vignerons qui réfléchissent au vin. Et puis il y a Nicolas Joly — un homme qui a tout abandonné de ce qu’il connaissait, est retourné sur une colline dominant la Loire et a décidé de réinventer le vin de fond en comble. Non pas comme technique. Comme philosophie. Comme vision du monde.

L’histoire commence loin de la France.

Le Banquier Devenu Paysan

Nicolas Joly n’était pas vigneron. Il était banquier d’affaires chez Morgan Stanley à New York et à Londres. Bien payé, bien habillé, bien installé. Et puis, en 1977, son père mourut. Joly rentra chez lui — au domaine familial du Château de la Roche aux Moines à Savennières, une petite appellation sur la rive gauche de la Loire que la plupart des Français ne pouvaient pas trouver sur une carte.

Il ne savait rien sur le vin. Il ne savait rien sur la viticulture. Ce qu’il savait — avec la précision d’un analyste financier — c’est que les sols étaient malades. Pesticides. Herbicides. Engrais chimiques. Les sols sentaient le laboratoire, pas la terre.

Rudolf Steiner et la Découverte de la Biodynamie

Ce que Joly fit ensuite semble fou à beaucoup. Il lut Rudolf Steiner — le philosophe et mystique autrichien qui donna en 1924 une série de conférences sur les “fondements spirituels pour le renouvellement de l’agriculture.” Steiner décrivait la ferme comme un organisme vivant, la terre comme un être vivant, les planètes comme des forces invisibles influençant la croissance des plantes. Calendrier lunaire. Bouse de corne. Préparations cosmiques.

Joly écouta. Et puis il agit.

En 1980, il convertit l’intégralité du domaine à l’agriculture biodynamique — parmi les tout premiers vignerons de France à le faire. Aucune chimie. Aucun pesticide synthétique. Travail selon le calendrier lunaire. Enfouissement de bouse de corne en automne, déterrage au printemps. Préparations d’herbes pulvérisées sur les vignes. Les sols recommencèrent à vivre.

Le Monopole : Un Vignoble comme une Cathédrale

La Coulée de Serrant n’est pas un vignoble ordinaire. Elle est cultivée sans interruption depuis 1130 — presque 900 ans. Les moines cisterciens qui la créèrent ne choisirent pas ce coteau par hasard : des pentes escarpées orientées au sud, d’ardoise et de roches volcaniques, dominant un affluent de la Loire, avec une combinaison unique de chaleur, de fraîcheur et de profondeur minérale. Seulement 7 hectares. Au maximum 20 à 25 hectolitres par hectare — une fraction du maximum autorisé de 40. Partiellement travaillée avec un cheval, car la pente est trop raide pour les tracteurs.

La Coulée de Serrant est l’un des rares vignobles de France à posséder sa propre AOC en Monopole — aux côtés de la Romanée-Conti, de La Tâche et de Château Grillet. Cet honneur n’est pas un hasard. C’est la reconnaissance de près d’un millénaire d’histoire viticole sur un terroir singulier.

Le Caractère Polarisant : Pourquoi les Vins de Joly Font Débat

Aucun vigneron en France ne polarise autant que Nicolas Joly. D’un côté : Andrew Jefford, qui le salue comme le créateur de l’un des plus grands vins blancs secs de France. De l’autre : des critiques qui qualifient les vins d’oxydatifs, d’instables et techniquement incohérents. La vérité — et c’est la réponse honnête — se situe quelque part entre les deux, et dépend beaucoup de la bouteille.

Les vins de Joly sont mis en bouteille avec un minimum de soufre. C’est un choix philosophique : le soufre tue l'”énergie” du vin, croit-il. Le résultat est un vin qui vit — et qui parfois vit de manière incontrôlée. Les bonnes bouteilles sont saisissantes. Les moins bonnes peuvent être submergées par l’oxydation. Ce n’est pas une erreur du vigneron. C’est une conséquence de ses convictions.

Le 2007 est une année où cette conviction fonctionne : la richesse du millésime, son fruit opulent et sa substance naturelle donnent au vin assez de corps pour tenir — malgré le soufre minimal, malgré la maturité, malgré les 15,5%. Un vin qu’on n’oublie pas. Et sur lequel on débattra encore dans des décennies.

C’est peut-être la plus grande chose qu’on puisse dire d’un vin.

The Difficult Vintage: Why 2013 is the Most Honest Year from Domaine des Tours

In the wine world, there are easy vintages and difficult vintages. The easy ones make every winemaker look brilliant — warmth, ripeness, concentration, applause. The difficult ones sort things out. They separate winemakers from farmers, patience from impatience, conviction from adaptation.

2013 was a difficult vintage. And Domaine des Tours 2013 is perhaps the most honest wine Emmanuel Reynaud has ever made.

A Year Against the Current

The spring of 2013 in Provence was cold and wet. The flowering was irregular. The summer was capricious — warm, then cold, then warm again. Many producers in the South harvested early to avoid the worst. Reynaud did not. He waited for autumn — for those final October weeks when the weather finally cleared and the grapes found the last ripeness they needed.

The result: grapes with unusually high acidity, less concentration than in warm years, but a minerality and freshness that gave the wines a tension rare in the southern Rhône. This is not a wine you love immediately. It is a wine you understand — and then cannot put down.

What “Natural Acidity” Means

In the age of climate change, natural acidity in the South of France is a rare commodity. Most modern wines from the Vaucluse or Côtes du Rhône are acidified with purchased tartaric acid — a legal, widespread practice that is technically clean and yet misses something fundamental. The acidity must come from the grape. From the vine. From the vintage.

In the 2013 Domaine des Tours, it comes from exactly there. And you feel it. The wine has a tension, a vivacity, a precision on the palate that cannot be bought. You can only let it grow — or wait until it is there.

Reynaud waited.

The Paradox of the Cool Year in the Warm South

Here lies the paradox of 2013: in a year that the wine world labelled as difficult, Reynaud made a wine that cannot be born in many other years. Not because he did something exceptional — but because he did nothing against it. He let nature be what it was that year: cooler, more taut, more mineral than usual. And he waited until it was finished.

That is the true lesson of Domaine des Tours 2013. Not “a good wine from a difficult year.” But: “A different wine from a different year — and that is not an excuse, it is a quality.”

Anyone who knows all four vintages in the range — 2013, 2016, 2017, 2018 — drinks four different versions of the same philosophy. Four different answers to the same question: what can Grenache from Sarrians truly be? The 2013 gives the coolest, most austere and perhaps most thoughtful answer of all.

La Pialade: What Happens When Rayas Sorts

In every great estate in the world, there is a selection. A quiet but consequential decision: these barrels will become the great wine. These will not. The rejected grapes — not concentrated enough, not ripe enough, the wrong parcel in this particular year — become something else.

In most great estates, that means a second wine. At Château Rayas, it means La Pialade.

The “Rejects” of Rayas

Emmanuel Reynaud is known for making no compromises. Every grape that does not pass selection for Rayas or Fonsalette ends up in La Pialade. Not because it is bad — but because it does not meet Reynaud’s standard for those wines. The benchmark is Rayas. And those who know Rayas understand: that benchmark is absurdly high.

The result is a wine that insiders describe as the most generous secret of the southern Rhône. A Côtes du Rhône better than nine out of ten Châteauneuf-du-Papes on the market. Not because of the appellation. Not because of the terroir. But because of the hands that make it — and because those hands have already taken the best for Rayas, and still leave this behind.

Vinified in the Cellar of Rayas

This is not a detail — it is the heart of the story. La Pialade is not born in a separate cellar, not in a different facility. It is born in the mythical cellar of Château Rayas itself, with the same old foudres, the same spontaneous yeasts, the same temperature, the same care. What the wine loses is the status of the grape. What it keeps is everything else.

Spontaneous fermentation. No temperature control. Long ageing. No filtration. No fining. The result is a wine that — despite its modest appellation — carries the full Reynaud craft: transparency, freshness, floral finesse, a lightness that deceives.

A Wine for Every Evening — and for No Special Occasion

There are wines you keep. For special evenings, for grand occasions, for guests who understand. And then there are wines you simply open. Because it is Tuesday. Because dinner is ready. Because you want to drink something good without thinking about it.

La Pialade is that wine. And that is not a comment on its quality — it is a comment on its character. It is the friend in the Reynaud universe: accessible, warm, immediately understood. Where Fonsalette makes you think and Rayas leaves you speechless, La Pialade simply makes you happy.

And sometimes that is the greatest thing of all.

Domaine Coche-Dury: The Estate That Needs No Explanation — and Deserves One Anyway

There are estates in Burgundy that are great because their terroirs are great. And then there is Domaine Coche-Dury — an estate that makes its terroirs great.

Jasper Morris, one of the world’s foremost Burgundy experts, put it perfectly: “You might expect to be able to put a finger on why the wines are so good. Are the yields low? Not exceptionally. Is there some wizardry during the vinification or élevage? Sometimes I think it is just that Jean-François Coche-Dury has green fingers.”

The Marriage That Created a Legend

The story of Coche-Dury begins in 1973 — with a marriage. Jean-François Coche, son of an old winemaking family from Meursault, marries Odile Dury. The Dury family brings vineyards. The Coche family brings generations of winemaking knowledge. Together, they create an estate that on paper appears modest — 9 hectares spread across six communes — and in the bottle is incomprehensibly great.

Robert Parker discovered the estate in the late 1980s and was immediately staggered. His evaluations of the Meursault Perrières and the Corton-Charlemagne set new standards. Within a few years, Coche-Dury was known worldwide — and the bottles were rarer than ever.

Jean-François: The Winemaker with Green Fingers

Jean-François Coche-Dury is not a theorist. He is a farmer — in the best sense of the word. He spent decades understanding every metre of his vineyards: which soil gives what to which vine, how each selection responds, how much sun each slope receives. No clones planted — a rarity in Burgundy, where most producers long ago switched to selected clones. Massal selections that preserve the genetic diversity of the old vines.

In the cellar: long fermentation in oak barrels with spontaneous yeasts, frequent battonage, 15 to 22 months of ageing, no filtration. The proportion of new oak varies — up to 50% for the great whites in certain years — but always deployed so that the wood serves rather than dominates.

Raphaël: The Second Generation Without Fear

In 2010, Jean-François handed the estate to his son Raphaël — a winemaker who grew up in his father’s vineyards and knows the most difficult task in the wine world: taking on a perfect legacy.

Raphaël has not tried to copy his father or surpass him. He has continued the estate with the same principles — respect for the terroir, patience in the cellar, precision in every decision — but with his own, modern sensibility. Connoisseurs are unanimous: Raphaël has maintained the level. Some say he has even slightly raised it.

Auxey-Duresses: The Silent Jewel of the Portfolio

In a portfolio that includes Corton-Charlemagne, Meursault Perrières and Volnay Premier Cru, one might consider the Auxey-Duresses Rouge a supporting player. That would be a mistake.

Auxey-Duresses lies in the valley west of Meursault, on steep limestone hillsides with a northerly aspect that gives Pinot Noir a natural coolness and freshness. The soils are clay-limestone, complex and deep — ideal for a Pinot Noir that prizes elegance over power. In Coche-Dury’s hands, this “simple” village wine becomes a lesson in Burgundian precision.

The Auxey-Duresses Rouge is the wine you buy when you want to drink Coche-Dury without depending on the secondary market. It is the wine that sommeliers worldwide recommend when someone asks: “What is the Coche-Dury signature?” The answer is in this bottle. Complete, clear and undeniable.

Château de Fonsalette: The Secret on the Other Side of the Boundary

Boundaries in wine are strange things. One metre of difference in location can be the difference between a simple table wine and a legendary Grand Cru — not because of the soil, not because of the grape, but because of a line that humans drew on a map.

Château de Fonsalette lives on the wrong side of that line. And makes of it one of the greatest estates in France.

1945: The Purchase That Started Everything

Louis Reynaud, grandfather of the current guardian Emmanuel Reynaud, acquired Fonsalette in 1945 — shortly after the end of the Second World War, in a France slowly rebuilding itself. The estate lies near Lagarde-Paréol, in the Côtes du Rhône area, directly at the northern edge of the Châteauneuf-du-Pape appellation. 120 hectares in total: forests, olive groves, agricultural land — and just 12 hectares of vines. This modesty of surface is not a weakness. It is intention.

The soils are complex: sand, clay, limestone — similar but not identical to the famous gravel soils of Rayas. Old-vine Grenache, Cinsault and Syrah for the reds; Grenache Blanc, Clairette and Marsanne for the whites. All harvested by hand. All vinified with the same methods as Rayas. All aged in the same cellar.

One Cellar. Three Legends.

This is the key to understanding Fonsalette: the wine is not vinified at Fonsalette itself. It travels to Emmanuel Reynaud — to Château Rayas. There, in the same mythical cellar, under the same direction, with the same old foudres and the same philosophy, the Fonsalette Rouge is born alongside the Rayas, alongside the Pignan. No temperature control. No filtration. Spontaneous fermentation. Long ageing.

What distinguishes Fonsalette from Rayas is not the method. It is the terroir — the other side of the boundary. And that makes it one of the most fascinating wines in France: a wine one does not drink because it is cheaper than Rayas. One drinks it because it is different. More deeply rooted in Cinsault and its floral lightness. Broader in its Grenache base. More accessible, but no less complex.

Cinsault: The Forgotten Pearl

In a world that worships Grenache and Syrah, Cinsault is the forgotten grape. Too light, some say. Too little colour, too little extraction. And yet: in Fonsalette, the Cinsault — up to 35% of the blend — gives the wine something Grenache alone cannot provide. Flowers. Rose. Violet. An airy lightness that keeps the wine from ever feeling heavy despite its depth. It is this lightness that distinguishes Fonsalette from every other southern Rhône wine — that Burgundian bearing that runs through every vintage.

The Price of Integrity

Fonsalette is one of the most sought-after Côtes du Rhône in the world — and one of the most expensive. Bottles from the great vintages change hands for more than 500 CHF on the secondary market. Not because there was a plan to create a luxury Côtes du Rhône. But because Emmanuel Reynaud simply does the only thing he knows: wine of absolute integrity, regardless of what is written on the label.

That is the paradox of Fonsalette. The label says Côtes du Rhône. The wine says: I am what I am. And that is enough.

Grenache Blanc: The Underrated Queen of the South

When one mentions the name Château Rayas, most people think of red. Of Grenache Noir. Of that almost supernatural power born from poor soils and old vines. But those who truly understand what Emmanuel Reynaud does know: the white is at least as fascinating. Perhaps more so.

For Château Rayas Blanc — made from 100% Grenache Blanc — is considered in connoisseur circles to be one of the greatest white wines in the world. Not great in the sense of loud, concentrated, heavily extracted. Great in the sense of complex, unfathomable, timeless. Wines that can age ten, twenty, thirty years and reinvent themselves with every bottle.

The Les Tours Réserve Grenache Blanc is the echo of this philosophy — at a more accessible, but no less fascinating level.

A Mutation That Changes Everything

Grenache Blanc is not an independent grape variety in the classical sense — it is a natural mutation of red Grenache Noir. The genetic kinship is so close that on some old parcels, red and white grapes can literally grow on the same vine — a phenomenon known as an “ampelographic chimera.” What looks like a genetic accident produces in the glass an entire world of its own.

Grenache Blanc is the white grape nobody knows — and everyone should love. It has the potential of Chardonnay, the aromatics of Viognier, the acidity of Vermentino. But it is none of these things. It is itself — generous and fresh, creamy and mineral, expressive and complex.

Why Vaucluse — and Not Châteauneuf?

A legitimate question. Grenache Blanc is permitted in Châteauneuf-du-Pape. Reynaud could theoretically produce a white Châteauneuf. He does not — or barely. Why? Because his best white parcels lie in Sarrians, outside the appellation, on soils with a different geological composition: black sand, gravel, limestone. A terroir that gives the Grenache Blanc a minerality and freshness impossible in the heavy clay soils of Châteauneuf.

The IGP Vaucluse label is therefore not a constraint. It is a liberation — the possibility of producing the finest expression of Grenache Blanc, independent of appellation rules.

A Wine for Those Who Ask: “What Can White Wine Really Be?”

The Les Tours Réserve Grenache Blanc is not a simple answer to that question. It is a complex, layered, slowly unfolding answer — best understood by opening the bottle, waiting an hour, then drinking again. And marvelling at how much the wine has changed.

That is Grenache Blanc. That is Reynaud. That is Sarrians.