Once scorned, Grenache is having fun with a global revival

The world of wine harbours few mysteries, however right here’s one. There’s a brand new fashion of wine adopted by winemakers all around the world, a lot of them impressed by one specific wine that’s nearly unimaginable to purchase. Even extra unexpectedly, it comes from a well-known area the place all the opposite wines are made by locals who appear decided to disregard it and as a substitute produce wines which can be the polar reverse. 

Stranger nonetheless, this wine, which I too love and admire, is made within the least salubrious cellar I’ve ever visited. It is Château Rayas, a purple Châteauneuf-du-Pape constructed from Grenache grapes which manages to be each wealthy and ethereal, clear and floral, totally hedonistic and essentially alcoholic (as a result of Grenache wants full ripeness) however with out heft.

I used to be not too long ago reminded of Rayas’s totemic standing when tasting a very scrumptious southern California Grenache courtesy of London wine retailers Lea & Sandeman. The wine, A Tribute to Grace 2017, was made by Angela Osborne from Santa Barbara Highlands Vineyard, whose raison d’être as a winemaker, the accompanying notes inform us, “is replicating a bottle of Château Rayas she had many years ago, and finding the truest expression of Grenache possible”. It was probably the most scrumptious mixture of white pepper, huge sweetness and convincing purity.

Until not too long ago Grenache was a scorned grape, however it’s now having fun with a global revival. It began in Spain the place Garnacha, as Grenache is thought there, was the nation’s most-planted grape till a reverence for Tempranillo dislodged it from the highest spot. Because Garnacha is especially tolerant of drought, and its arduous wooden means it has not suffered from the vine trunk illnesses which have decimated plantings of many different vine varieties, the typical age of Garnacha vines is comparatively excessive. As a outcome, its produce tends to be distinctly superior.

The selection is now so modern that the value of Grenache grapes has doubled within the final two or three years to overhaul that of Shiraz

Dani Landi grew to become a pioneer of bold, handcrafted, delicate Garnacha when he co-founded Comando G, a vineyard within the Gredos mountains west of Madrid, with Fernando Garcia, in 2008. It is grown on the granite with which Garnacha appears to have an affinity. Landi admits that when he began out, Rayas was a reference level.

The status of filigree Gredos Garnachas grew to such an extent that comparable wines started to be made throughout Spain. Master of Wine Fernando Mora fashions an array of delicate Garnachas in Aragón beneath his Frontonio label. I emailed him to ask whether or not Château Rayas had ever been an inspiration. “Yes, always,” he replied, in seconds. “Plenty of herbs, flowers and fruit from a Pinot-like style, with finesse and the ability to age is what makes me love that wine.” 

In the retro La Mancha wine area in central Spain, Elías López Montero ages the fruit of a plot of outdated Garnacha vines for 11 months within the area’s conventional clay jars, generally known as tinajas. The result’s the distinctive pale purple Verum, Ulterior Parcela No 6, with its grainy texture and a refreshing mineral observe. He loves these outdated tinajas a lot that when a brand new one arrives in his cellar, having been sourced from a neighbour, he welcomes it with a heartfelt embrace. He too sees a similarity between these new Garnachas and the Pinot Noir of Burgundy, and was impressed to strive his hand at making one having beforehand made Pinot Noir in Patagonia.

Michael Hill Smith, an Australian winemaker, was in London not too long ago to indicate off his newest enterprise, MMAD, named after the initials of the 4 companions concerned. It’s based mostly on a comparatively high-altitude winery with particularly outdated vines, together with some 80-year-old Grenache, a grape nearly ignored Down Under till not too long ago. He says the variability is now so modern that the value of Grenache grapes has doubled within the final two or three years to overhaul that of Shiraz.

“It’s very trendy inside the tent,” he advised me. “McLaren Grenache suddenly had perfume thanks to the wines of Steve Pannell and Yangarra, like Pinot.” Is Rayas ever talked about in that tent? “All the time,” he responded slightly wearily.

So right here’s this wine that’s regarded by winemakers all around the world as a type of holy grail. Yet what number of of them have tasted it in any respect usually? Although different Châteauneuf-du-Pape producers are touting their 2021s, the newest classic accessible of Ch Rayas is 2011, and costs have risen so vertiginously {that a} single bottle of 2011 Ch Rayas purple (there’s additionally a unusual, full bodied white) now prices greater than £1,500.

Wine author John Livingstone-Learmonth of drinkrhone.com has many years of expertise of Rhône wines and their makers. I requested him why Emmanuel Reynaud, who inherited Ch Rayas on the demise of his hermit-like uncle, Jacques, in 1997, was releasing the wine so slowly. “He does always release late these days,” he wrote, “given that Jacques went through a splurge of selling off nearly everything, the cellar denuded of bottles, the lesson learnt. There was no 2018 to speak of, so Emmanuel is inclined to allow stocks to rise to cover such years.”

I’m wondering how most of the Rayas acolytes have visited the vineyard? Thanks to Chris Davey, the previous UK importer of Rayas, I’ve managed 5 appointments at this distinctly unprepossessing constructing on the finish of a winding, barely signposted lane, and managed to achieve admittance to style the younger wines at solely 4 of them. The final time, in 2014, I arrived on the agreed time to seek out all of the doorways and home windows closed and shuttered. I wandered across the again and located a lone labourer who knowledgeable me that his boss was busy at his different vineyard, Ch des Tours in Vacqueyras. This is the one time I’ve been stood up by a wine producer.

To me, probably the most extraordinary of the various extraordinary elements of Ch Rayas is how pure the wines are in comparison with the situations wherein they’re made and aged. I’ve by no means seen such gray, historical, cobwebby casks, organized apparently at random within the dusty, earth-floored vineyard. It will not be the one wine that (finally) emerges from these unprepossessing cellars. There can be Pignan, from one other plot on the property, and two Côtes du Rhônes, Ch de Fonsalette and Pialade, the final two of which embody grapes aside from Grenache. Pialade is launched sooner than the opposite wines; you may really purchase the 2015 if you happen to’re ready to pay a three-digit sum for a mere Côtes du Rhône.

Why achieve this few different producers of Châteauneuf make a wine even remotely like Rayas? They appear caught within the groove of the highly effective, concentrated wines championed by US critics comparable to Robert Parker within the Nineteen Nineties. Perhaps the locals hardly ever get an opportunity to style Rayas and be impressed by it? When the wines are finally launched, they have a tendency to whoosh out of the area straight into the worldwide advantageous wine market.

For a few years, I went to the village to style a whole lot of examples from the most recent classic and it was one of the vital bludgeoning assaults on my palate, so concentrated have been the wines. As in lots of areas, the wines have been lightening up in recent times however nonetheless, the fashion of the world’s favorite Châteauneuf stays, mysteriously, largely ignored by its neighbours.

Tasting notes on Purple Pages of JancisRobinson.com. More stockists from Wine-searcher.com

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