So I had downloaded these maps from the Official Tourism Site of the Vineyards of the Rhone Valley, and I was hoping that they would lead me to the cool and groovy places to check out in the Rhone wine region. The first issue I had was not with the maps, but with something that I didn’t really think about when planning this trip, almost all the highways in France are toll roads. The roads are in beautiful shape, not a pothole to be found, but it did cost me almost 20 Euro in tolls for the hour and a half drive to the Northern Rhone.
The second thing was that both the GPS in the car and the one I had brought from home (pre-loaded with European maps, thank you very much) knew nothing about any of the locations listed on the map. Mostly because most of these places did not have an actual street address. It would take us the better part of the morning to realize that using the Lat-Long coordinates provided was the best way to get close to a location (usually about 100 yards) and then just hunt the puppy down.
With those hurdles being overcome, we finally got down to the business of wine. We entered the Northern Rhone region in the AOC of Côte Rôtie. This is not a large AOC with only 231 hectares being under grape in 2005. The only grapes allowed to be planted here are Syrah as a red grape and Viognier as a white grape and only red wines are allowed to be made of which no more than 20% can be made up of Viognier. The most interesting thing about this region (aside from the fact that the wines are pretty darned delicious) is that all the vines are bush trained. This means that the grape vines aren’t trained to grow on a wire, but into a more compact bush shape. This is because the Mistral, a wind that is almost perpetually blowing down the Rhone valley, is tough on the grape vines and the the bush training allows them to survive better.
We didn’t stop in Côte Rôtie, nor the next appellation on the road, Condrieu. Condrieu is home of the Viognier grape and as such, it holds a certain fascination for me as someone involved with Virginia wine. Much like Côte Rôtie, many of the very steep hillsides in Condrieu are terraced to allow grapes to grow and the soil (what little there is of it) to remain in place and many of the vineyards are terraced. They only allow the Viognier grape to be grown here and most are trained bush style. It is interesting to note that in the 1960’s the AOC was down to only 12 hectares in size, but because of the renaissance in Rhone varietals that took place in the 70’s and 80’s the size of this appellation is now up to 135 hectares.
We finally came to rest in the most well known of the Northern Rhone AOCs, Hermitage. It is here that red wines of some distinction have been produced for hundreds of years. Behind the sleepy little town of Tain l’Hermitage, there is a hill upon which are grown the most famous Syrah grapes in the world. It is dominated by two houses, M. Charpoutier and Paul Jaboulet Aîné.
We stopped at two tasting rooms, that for Delas and M. Charpoutier and both had some extraordinary wines available. In fact, the Diminutive One picked up a bottle of Deutz Pink Champagne from the Delas house. It seems that Delas is owned by the Deutz family and they are a champagne house. Hence being able to find true champagne in the Hermitage region.
All that being said, I have several bottles of both Delas and M. Charpoutier Hermitage resting comfortably in my wine cellar. These wines will need several years to reach their maximum potential as the structure is designed to allow drinking while they are young, but to be most expressive after they mature for several years.
Finally, the trip back to the chateau was not without adventure. A couple of things that a traveler might want to take note of when headed to the countryside of France. First of all, everyone shuts down their shops for lunch. The time period between noon and 2 PM everything is closed and i do mean everything. Pack a lunch because restaurants are hard to find open as well. Secondly, restaurants don’t open for dinner until 8 PM.
This led to our final adventure of the day as around 6 PM we were wandering around Tain l’Hermitage looking for a place to eat and there was nothing open. So we clambered back into the Silver Fox (the Mercedes wagon we rented for the week) and Brigit (our ever so sexily voiced GPS maiden) take us back to the town of Chambery, hoping that we could find dinner there. After several fits and starts and a flipping off from a waiter at one of the restaurants, we finally got dinner in, only to find that the parking garage that we had parked our car in had closed for the evening and that we had left our ticket in the car. Softball Johnny came to the rescue with bits and pieces of mangled French and bastardized English finally got the Silver Fox released from its French prison.
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