Our Favourite Things: Great Grenache

My love affair with the Rhône is rather recent. I studied Rhône in my sommelier training program 10 years ago, but at the time, I wasn’t as thrilled by it as I was by Burgundy and Bordeaux. That’s a surprise, really, as my red-wine epiphany was great-value Rasteau (an AOC in Southern Rhône), years before I endeavoured to make wine a career.

But Rhône red became a true love last fall on a bottom-to-top tour from Avignon to Côte-Rôtie, with many stops in between.

Two things really stood out for me on this trip: the wonderfully aromatic whites, and the structure and intensity of grenache.

Discovering Grenache from the Rhône Valley

Although grenache makes up more than 50 percent of many great reds, and sometimes 100 percent, my misguided impression going into the trip was that grenache is merely the soft, round component of the Rhône blend.

A flight of Tavel from various terroirs at Les Vignerons des Tavels was a nice introduction to the versatility of grenache, but it was tasting Perrin & Fils’ 2007 Gigondas (80 percent grenache), which had peppery black fruit (what I’d normally call syrah-like character), that hinted at the importance of grenache.

In Cairanne, at the small Domaine De L’Ameillaud owned by Englishman Nick Thompson, I loved the personality of the mainly grenache wines: their tar, smoke, minerality and red and black fruit. The Cairanne is 65 percent grenache and the Côtes du Rhône is 70 percent grenache.

The next day, I was quite taken with Domaine des Escaravailles in Rasteau, notably a Rasteau Heritage 1924, 100 percent grenache from 85-plus-year-old vines. At lunch in the dreamy hillside town of Séguret, at the gorgeous restaurant Le Mesclun, Walter McKinlay of Domaine de Mourchon sang the praises of underappreciated grenache, and his wines backed him up, particularly a 2007 Séguret (100 percent grenache.)

There’s no doubt syrah, mourvèdre and cinsault can add complexity, colour and structure to Rhône blends, but grenache has long been unfairly characterized as soft and round. If not over-cropped, and with appropriate terroir, it is the anchor of serious, ageworthy wines. 

Even though Rasteau was an early favourite, it took a trip to the Rhône to cement my love for the terrific value, well-balanced, grenache-based reds of Southern Rhône. They are now fixtures on my wine-shopping list.

Read about more of Our Favourite Things about wine.