Château Grillet Côtes du Rhône 2023

Why is this Wine so Yummy?

Bottled from young vines (of up to 25 years old) and some parcels in the more productive, fertile soils at the bottom of the property, this may be labelled as humble Côtes-du-Rhône, but it is obviously a very special one, being 100% Viognier from the slopes of Château-Grillet.

Like the Château-Grillet cuvée, the Côtes du Rhône was whole-bunch pressed and fermented wild. Half of the wine was aged in stainless steel vats and the other half in neutral 228-litre barrels for one year, after which the wine rested in stainless steel for six months.

From the Château

From the 2011 vintage, the technical team decided on an even stricter selection for the wines going into the Château-Grillet blend. Analysis and comparative tasting of the different parcels showed that certain wines have not yet achieved the high level required for Château-Grillet. Nevertheless, this has allowed us to create an excellent Côtes-du-Rhône, made entirely from Viognier, which has much to offer with very good fruit and plenty of charm. This wine has simply been named “Côtes-du-Rhône”, like the appellation it belongs to.

The elegant fruity freshness of the Côtes-du-Rhône of Château Grillet can be appreciated in its youth, the perfect accompaniment for jellied ham with parsley, seared bass fillet, a salad of grilled vegetables marinated in olive oil, or even a platter of sushi and sashimi.

Minerality, tightness, elegance . . .

About Château Grillet

Purchased by the Pinault family in 2011 and managed by Frédéric Engerer (who also looks after the family’s other viticultural interests—Château Latour, Clos de Tart, Domaine Eugenie, Eisele Vineyard), the quality here is still on the upswing. Korean winemaker Jaeok Cramette arrived at the property, having moved down from Domaine Eugenie in the Côte de Nuits. She previously worked for an importer in South Korea but came to France in 2008 to pursue a winemaking degree and stayed in Burgundy afterward. Despite being a recent arrival, she was conversant with all the vineyard plots, saying of the property’s four hectares, “I feel like I’m doing gardening, not viticulture.” This minuscule estate recently added an adjacent parcel of Condrieu, so going forward there will be three wines released each year.

Château-Grillet has a rich history, illustrating perfectly the passion and devotion of many generations of men and women for this exceptional terroir.

The vineyards of Condrieu and Château-Grillet were planted by the emperor Probus in the 3rd century AD, from plants brought from Dalmatia. Numerous mosaics preserved at the archaeological site in Saint-Roman-en-Gal (around 12km away) confirm its origins and one of them shows a harvest scene including grape crushing. The early development of the vineyards in this region is probably linked to the Pax Romana. This allowed the ancient Gallic tribe the Allobroges, whose territory included part of the right bank of the Rhône facing Vienne, to acquire Roman citizenship and therefore have the right to plant vines.

Judging by her first two vintages in charge, Cramette is living out the rule that if you are good enough, you are old enough. In just her second vintage in charge at Château-Grillet, Cramatte received a perfect score from France’s leading wine guide, a tribute not just to her talents but also to the work of her predecessor, Alessandro Noli, and the many who laid the groundwork.

That Château-Grillet’s Lazarus-like return to the top of France’s wine hierarchy has happened faster than many expected will be no surprise to anyone who knows François Pinault and his driven technical director, Frédéric Engerer. Pinault’s Artémis Domaines is the current owner of Château Latour and Clos de Tart, and has previously revitalised some of France’s most historically important terroirs, even if Grillet needed more TLC than others.

Today we see a shift to the leadership of Aloïs Houeto, Château-Grillet’s new technical director, grew up in Nantes. He was first introduced to the world of fine wine through his father, a passionate enthusiast of Loire Valley wines. While studying at Bordeaux’s agronomic engineering school, Houeto broadened his expertise with a three-month stint at Stellenbosch University, specializing in precision viticulture. After completing numerous internships, including one at Château Montrose, he finished his studies and pursued a precision-viticulture-related R&D project at Château Latour with the idea of doing a PhD afterwards. However, when the Artemis Group—owners of Château Latour and Château-Grillet—offered him a permanent role as R&D Manager, Houeto chose to forego his PhD. His profound knowledge of precision viticulture is proving invaluable in his new role. The tiny 4-hectare Château-Grillet is divided into 102 vineyard terraces from which 15 to 20 distinct lots are vinified separately, setting the base for the final Château-Grillet blend.

In the Vineyard

Just 3.5 hectares in the heart of the northern Rhône valley . . .

Château-Grillet is located between the villages of Vérin and Saint-Michel-sur-Rhône (Loire department), on the right bank of the Rhône to the south of the town of Vienne. Since 1936 this real jewel of Nature has been one of the smallest and most prestigious French appellations producing a single white wine, one of the greatest.

The vineyard of Château-Grillet is in the form of a southern-facing amphitheatre, enjoying an exceptionally hot and sunny microclimate, protected from the winds from the north. The name “Grillet” may refer to hillsides “grilled” or burnt by the sun. The vines have an average age of 45 years and are planted on sometimes breathtakingly steep slopes. They are at 150-250 metres above sea level and spread over 87 marvellous terraces, called “chaillées”, held up by dry stone walls which have been meticulously maintained and preserved over the centuries. Ever since the Roman times, the hand of man has been required continuously to maintain these terraces, giving a sense of purpose and identity to this magical place with its mind-blowing beauty.

Since the change of ownership in 2011, priority has been given by the team to doing everything necessary to glorify this unique viticultural heritage and to better understand the complexities of each parcel. Magnificent but demanding, the vineyard requires meticulous attention and a lot of patience.

Led by Alessandro Noli, the new regime immediately set about pushing this legendary terroir to its full potential. Organic and biodynamic farming led the way in revitalising the health of Grillet’s rocky, schist-dominated soils. At the same time, the 3.5-hectare vineyard was reorganised into 102 meticulously marked terraces, all worked by hand, hoe and horse-drawn plough. A second wine, a declassified Côtes du Rhône, was introduced to improve the quality of the first through rigorous selection. Importantly, the picking regime—so critical to temper Viognier’s capricious tendencies—is now overseen by Jean-Louis Chave to deliver a seamless balance between ripeness and fine acidity.

Understanding the complexity and diversity of all the different vineyard parcels is a fascinating task. Getting the best out of this veritable jewel of a vineyard requires humility, patience and also work, a lot of work. All the vineyard work is done manually, in the search of precision but also because some of the terraces are so narrow that only man can work them. Each year all the terraces need to be inspected carefully, to look after the stone walls which wear away over time.

In the Winery

The unique style of Château-Grillet derives from careful vinification techniques, respecting the greatness of the terroir. A fascinating adventure.

After the harvest, each selection of vineyard parcels is pressed separately.

The grapes are chilled before whole-bunch pressing. This is a crucial step which requires continued oversight and a lot of precision. A new tank room was installed before the 2012 vintage, with small stainless-steel, temperature-controlled tanks. This has given the team the chance to be able to vinify each different selection separately and with precision. The juice settles for 24 to 48 hours before wild fermentation, which finishes in barrel, where the wine always undergoes malolactic conversion. It ages for approximately 12 months in barrel, sometimes more, before the wine rests another six to eight months in stainless still vats. In a departure from the previous regime, only one new 300-litre barrel is added to the cellar each year, which equates to roughly 20% new wood in the blend. The rest of the wine ages in second- to fourth-use wood.

About Viognier

In Australia, as in Côte-Rôtie, we tend to see Viognier in blends co-fermented with Shiraz where it adds wonderful perfume, and texture to red wines like Yarray Yering’s Dry Red No.2,  Clonakilla’s, and, Serrat’s Shiraz Viognier.

As a white wine, the spectrum of styles it can make is extreme. Guigal makes two of the boldest version with the Cuvées ‘La Doriane’ and the incredibly rare dessert wine ‘Luminescence’. La Doriane breaks all the rules. I used 20ml of a bottle to analyse it.

The pH was 4.0 the titratable acidity 4.0. Normally you’d expect a white wine to have a pH 3.0 & 3.5 with a titratable acidity between 5.5-7g/L acid. This is where the extremes of texture comes out to play, the high pH and low acidity combined with the high level of phenolics in La Doriane give it an oily, almost unctuous,  yet still dry texture. The high pH renders any sulphur additions near useless, the fruit must have incredible depth and length of flavour, capacity to handle oxygen contact not to oxidise. It results in a wine so unique that it becomes, perhaps one of the easiest wines to name in a blind tasting.

Guigal have made a very specific set of winemaking choices.

At the other end of the spectrum, it’s possible to make a gently pressed, tank-fermented version that has fewer phenolics from the skins and returns higher acidity and freshness.

Then there’s everything in between.

One thing is certain, good Viognier will have an entrancing perfume, and, a wonderful texture!

Look out for Château Grillet, Goreges Vernay, Yves Cuilleron, André Perret and Guigal.

Where in the World is Château Grillet?

Château Grillet is the smallest AOC in France, owned by only one Domaine of its namesake. It is in the Northern Rhône within Condrieu.