Lifting the lid on 2018 in the Rhône

A fermenter of Côte Rôtie 2018

The inside story of the 2018 vintage in the Rhône valley.

For a guide to our coverage of the Rhône 2018 vintage, see this article.

If there’s one word that sums up the 2018 vintage in the Rhône, it’s ‘unsummupable’.

Rhône wines from the 2016 and 2017 vintage were almost universally admired, and the only thing required was to nit-pick between which of the two was better, or whether north beat south, or whether the wines should be kept or consumed.

But in 2018 the outlook is less straightforward. The region’s official body has trumpeted the vintage as ‘...