Earlier this summer I spent a week in France's Rhone Valley wine region, courtesy of the wine industry association. The visit gave me a chance to visit a variety of appellations and some wineries I hadn't seen before, and to get an idea of what's new.
In one sense, of course, there's nothing new in the Rhone. It's a long-established wine region that's France's second-largest; only Bordeaux is larger. To give you an idea of the scale of the region, the Rhone covers an area that's equivalent to about half the area that Australia has planted in vines. It has produced wine for 2,000 years and is well-known for many superb appellations, among them Cote-Rotie, Tavel and Chateauneuf-du-Pape.
What I was especially interested in, though, was Cotes-du-Rhone, an expansive appellation that spreads out across the plain in the southern Rhone valley. Cotes-du-Rhone wines can be made from many grape varieties: 13 red varieties and eight white are permitted. Ninety per cent of Rhone wine is red (with six per cent rose and only four per cent white), and the most common varieties are Grenache, Syrah and Mourvedre.
This combination is very compelling, and Australian producers have popularized it as the "GSM" blend.
Now, the thing about Cotes-du-Rhone is that it produces a huge volume of wine each year. It's the house wine in countless bistros, bars and restaurants in Paris and elsewhere in France. I'm sure that a lot of the wine I consumed by the glass and half-litre when I was a student in France was Cotes-du-Rhone. I wasn't much concerned about quality at that time, and I was happy with whatever was served up at the cheapest price.
Quite frankly, a lot of Cotes-du-Rhone at that time was mediocre at best, but with the general drive to quality in French wines, I was interested to see how the wines from Cotes-du-Rhone were doing.
Based on the wineries I visited and from some broader tasting, I'd say it's still a bit of a mixed bag, but that overall the quality and value is good to excellent. The bottles offered by the LCBO (like the three reviewed today) are generally very good value.
There are two broad categories of Cotes-du-Rhone: bottles labelled simply that, and others labelled Cotes-du-Rhone-Villages. These are wines made from grapes grown in communities considered superior to the run-of-the-mill areas. Above that is a group of 18 named communities (or villages). One is Rasteau, as in the Rasteau that's reviewed today.
An indication of the dynamism of the region is that four villages were permitted to put their names on Cotes-du-Rhone-Villages from the 2004 vintage. At the same time, two villages were promoted to their own appellation status on the strength of their red wines: Beaumes de Venise and Vinsobres.
Watch for Cotes-du-Rhone wines in forthcoming Vintages releases, especially wines from the 2004 and 2005 vintages. (In fact, from the past eight years, only the 2002 vintage is a bit suspect because there was a lot of rain that year.)
With luck, we'll see more Cotes-du-Rhone in the next few years. At present about 30 per cent of production is exported, but the industry aims to increase that to 40 per cent.
Four southern Rhone wines today, varying in vintage and price