Recent correspondence about Guigal (see Your turn in purple pages) reminded me that Yves Gangloff, who makes a particularly graceful Côte Rôtie and a humdinger of a Condrieu, and is an accurate and generous judge of other people's wines, recommended the following relatively new or generally underrated names in his part of the Rhône Valley. I haven't yet had a chance to check them all out myself but thought I'd pass them on in the hope that you, or a particularly keen wine importer near you, might like to investigate:
- Rôtie – Yves Laffoy
- St Joseph and Hermitage – Bernard Faurie (not new but on a roll)
- Crozes Hermitage – Gilles Robin, Luc Tardy
- Cornas – Courbis, Stéphane Robert, Joel Durand
Maybe this last trio will succeed in changing my mind about this appellation. See my FT account of a dismal tasting back in May 2000. As a result those nice guys from Willi's Wine Bar and Juveniles in Paris organised a massive Cornas tasting the following November in which Thierry Allemand's wines shone like a good deed. And more recently, I enjoyed enormously a half bottle of Jaboulet's 1991 Cornas (on The Wine Society of Stevenage's list last winter; look out for more mature offerings from its cellar).
Also in the northern Rhône, the Vins de Vienne operation run by those bright sparks Cuilleron, Gaillard and Villard is going from strength to strength. Their top wine Sotanum was an eye opener to me, made on the 'wrong' bank of the Rhône but on soils very similar to the Côte Brune of Côte Rôtie in its debut vintage 1999. From the 2000 vintage it will be joined by a Viognier and, from way down south in the Languedoc, a Faugères from La Liquière made by this exciting team. Wines are sold in the UK by John Armit of London W11 and Goedhuis of London SW8. Gangloff's wines, incidentally, can be found chez Raeburn Fine Wines of Edinburgh.
Gaillard and Villard are imported into the UK by H & H Bancroft and by Peter Vézan and Eric Solomon respectively in the US. Cuilleron is with Enotria in the UK.
