You Rhône fans out there might be interested in my latest piece for Napa Valley Wine Academy (and one of the several reasons that I am deplorably behind on all of my other coverage here at 1WD): a closer glance at some of the more intriguing Villages added to NVWA’s Côtes du Rhône online wine…
Tag: Rhone
Height Matters (Exceptional Gigondas)
Smack up against the Dentelles de Montmirail mountain range sits Gigondas, a former ancient Roman soldier retirement home area and Southern Rhône cru that, technically, contains more woodlands than vineyards. And that’s after a killer frost in the 1960s wiped out a good portion of olive tree plantings, ushering in a shift towards more vine…
“Big Character” (Diving Into Rasteau’s New-Old Identity)
Well… I’m in the unenviable position of having to date myself. Embarrassingly (not because of my age, about which I mostly don’t care, but because of my obvious lack of knowledge), I knew little about the Rasteau appellation prior to visiting it on a recent Rhône media jaunt, aside from the fact that it was…
Southern Rhône’s Troubled Middle Child (Welcome To Lirac)
Lirac has a bit of a troubled middle child syndrome on its hands. Being a middle child myself, I can relate. Look at it this way: if I asked you to tell me about some killer Southern Rhône reds (which is 85% of Lirac’s output), you’re probably going to start waxing poetic about Châteauneuf-du-Pape. You…