The late edgy wit and bon vivant Christopher Hitchens quipped that one of the most deplorable phrases to grate his ears was “White or Red?” As a quaffer of gargantuan quantities of red, Hitchens would have been at peace in Gigondas where that question is never posed: the appellation produces no white wine. Oddly, this basic trait of Gigondas gets no attention in a recent New York Times piece expounding on a “panel tasting” of Gigondas vintages. Then again, perhaps not oddly at all, considering the numerous lacunae that strike the eye at first glance.
Bylined by Eric Asimov, the article launches into a debunking of grenache – the grape variety predominate in the wines of the Southern Rhone – opining that grenache wines, even expensive ones mind you, may lose their potency and freshness of fruit by the second glass, or that the natural high alcohol levels may render grenache wines “jammy” (cloying concentrated fruit) and “sweet,” cautioning readers in a minatory bark that the ‘fatigue factor’ may menace grenache wines.
How these phrases must niggle the founders of the Grenache Symposium, a marketing initiative launched in June, 2010, to burnish the image of grenache and raise its brand awareness to the level of varietals like Cabernet, Merlot, Zinfandel, and Pinot Noir. Note: grenache is rarely vinified as a varietal; blended with Syrah to enhance structure, or Mourdevre to heighten aromas and flavors, the grape variety is identified on the back label.
Grenache at Harvest Time
Unless a grape variety is associated with a specific region (a terroir), such generic musings are vacuous and cutesy, not allowing the wine drinker to form rational expectations of the taste of a particular grenache-based vintage as the grape variety, the world’s most widely-planted, embraces an oceanic range in quality from great estate bottles to thin California jug wines. Yet this critique of grenache has dubious relevance to Gigondas, which ranks among the AOC’s producing in terms of quality, structure and complexity the world’s greatest grenache-based blends.
Unspoken and neglected are the heritage of Gigondas, its unique setting, the character of its wines (percentage of varieties), the styles of winemaking, and most egregiously its various terroirs.
Brace yourself for a strange and curious proposition. Asimov rhapsodizes over a 2008 Domaine du Cayron, the only wine on the page which moved him to invoke lush clichés, and while not in the tasting line-up, gets an Oscar as his benchmark for a good as it gets Gigondas. Whereas one cannot dispute his pleasure, employing a 2008 cuvée as a soi-disant benchmark would alarm local winemakers as that summer was rain-lashed and cool, placing the 2008 vintage as the second worst in the past decade.
Backstory: When Robert Parker of the Wine Advocate embarked to the Southern Rhone to taste the 2008 cuvées, many producers inveighed the wine world pasha to bypass tasting their 2008’s as the bottles were not all that good. In the tasting notes for Gigondas in the Wine Advocate, one recognizes numerous wineries with scores for 2007 and 09 but not for 2008, including the Domaine du Cayron which turns out a “consumer-friendly” style of wine ACTO Parker.
For Asimov this infatuation portends that a ‘07, ‘09, and ‘10 Domaine du Cayron, and most every other cuvée produced in the AOC for these years, will dismantle his palate with more intense fruit, higher alcohol and firmer tannins, risking what he deplores: over-the-topness. In tennis terms, think of grenache-based blends as PBers – the unrelenting powerful and aggressive strokes of a power baseline game (include massive Syrahs on this side of the net) – compared to other red grape varieties that offer the finesse of a serve-and-volley game.
More dispiriting is the manner of the panel in branding Gigondas as a wine inferior to Châteauneuf-du-Pape (CDP), eight graphs of copy mind you, in restating the obvious. Any wine consumer grasps this as a received idea, and if he does not know by taste, he will by price: the label-inflated CDP’s set you back on average more than double for Gigondas. It was almost as if the panel was prepping for a comparative tasting of the two AOCs. When Asimov laments that even his favorite Gigondas, “sadly,” lacks the “extra dimension” of a CDP, one can imagine the acquiescing donkey nods around the tasting table.
To really nail this point home, panelist Pascaline Lepeltier, wine director of Rouge Tomate in NYC, spins out this beauty: “There’s a tiny world between Côtes du Rhone and Gigondas, and a big gulf between Gigondas and Châteauneuf.” At first glance, this sentiment is hugely meaningless; on reflection, it is highly dubious. Consider this: Châteauneuf-du-Pape (CDP) the AOC is more than twice the surface size of Gigondas, and within CDP there is a marked variance between the good wines (86-89 rated) and the great ones (95-98). Match up an exceptional Gigondas against a good CDP, and the gulf is a gully, but compare that exceptional Gigondas to a pale plonkish Côtes du Rhone produced by a cooperative and sold in a bag-in-box and the gulf transforms into abyss. So goes the glib prattle of self-regarding NYC sommeliers pandering to the snobbish tastes of well-heeled clients willing to pop for a bottle of CDP at $150, or more.
You now find yourself in the eerie territory of the tasting panel – what the wine scribe Matt Kramer calls “group grope,” the dumbing down of taste by committee where keen individual judgment gives way to the “mediocrity median”: the least offensive and safest wines get the nod. Wines of a unique character and style are pushed aside in deference to the group. Just run a finger over the panel’s tasting notes to count the repetitive churlish descriptions (see below): the point is made.
More affecting would be a format pairing off two wine experts going at the wine, and at each other, to ferment sharp and colorful exchanges. Dueling palates.
In noting that Gigondas “rarely rises to the level of the exalted” (CDP), Asimov confesses that he ‘especially values everyday wines.” If wines are either exalted or everyday, good taste belongs only to the 1%-ers. In the continuing effort to gain a grasp how to classify wines, one can first be disencumbered of the overused and banalized New World / Old World, and consider this neat assortment: connoisseur and consumer. The former are high quality wines, which may require cellaring for a few years or many, whereas the latter vary in quality and are opened soon or within a few years of being released. (Note: in a few years, 90% of consumer wines will have screw caps.) In the Southern Rhone, CDP, Gigondas and its neighboring AOC Vacqueyras all qualify as luminous connoisseur wines.
Without any mention of the variances among three of the four vintages (‘07 to ’10) evaluated, the panel choose ten wines – from twenty tasted – ranking them by one to four stars, with anemic tasting notes attached to each bottle: not one word of any wine’s color in the glass; only a single vague reference to the nose / perfume of one wine, and although ‘fruit’ is employed in nearly every description, not once is there an attempt to animate this flavor ‘en bouche’ (suggestions: blackberry, cassis, raspberry, plum, kirsch, red currants, cherry and blueberries), and no percentages given of various varieties in a cuvée. It’s lazily-crafted amateurish stuff, a lurid lapse in sensory skills. Chalk it up to group think.
Gigondas Primer
Location: Gigondas the village and its eponymous AOC are located in the Upper Vaucluse, 10 miles east of Orange, 12 miles northeast of Chateauneuf-du-Pape, and 18 miles northeast of Avignon.
AOC: Created in 1971. 3000 acres. About 75 estate-bottled wines and more than 150 growers. Vines planted in the Gigondas in Roman times. Vineyards take their name from a lieu-dit, the smallest piece of land which has a vineyard assigned to it, yet a vineyard may own other lieu-dits in the appellation, and the name of the lieu-dit may appear on the label, or wines from more than one may be combined.
Terroir: The terroir has three distinct areas: the alluvial topsoil of gravel and clay on the plains declining to 450 feet, from the village of Gigondas (820 feet), a cone-shaped area just above the village of clay, limestone and sand, and the sandy limestone soil on the verdant slopes where vines populate terraces up to 1300 feet, under the gaze of the majestic Dentelles de Montmirail, jagged, limestone peaks. The clay soils of the plains and the cone (called the Font des Papes), which are both more resistant to drought, produce deep purple wines, of powerful fruit and alcohol with spicy and herbal perfumes, whereas the limestone slopes bring forth vintages of deep red fruit, firm tannins with a nose of garrigue and lavender and a strong minerality.
Winemaking: Lowest annual yield in France of 33-36 hecto-litres per hectare. Maceration is typically long, as it is in CDP, of three to four weeks. Fermentation in tanks followed by aging in oak barrels.
Vintages: 2005 a super year, good estates still in the cellar, 2006 drink now if on the shelves; 2007 an awesome vintage drinking now or cellar for a few years, develops earlier than the 2005′s; the rain-lashed 2008′s are atypical – thin on intense fruit and low alcohol, choose carefully; 2009 a very good vintage, hotter than 2007 thus less acid; to hold in cellar for another year or up to five depending upon cuvée; 2010 may rival 2007 yet with more aging potential.
Trivia: Kermit Lynch, the American importer who has a wine shop in Emeryville Ca, is co-owner of Les Pallières, a Gigondas vineyard founded 500 years ago.
Basics:
Gigondas: Website, Gigondas, the book
Restaurant l’Oustalet Gigondas: Website
Directions: Gigondas is located east of Orange. From Avignon, take autoroute 7 north, exit E714 at Courthezon, east on D950D Route de Vaison, connecting to D977 to Gigondas. From Carpentras, D7 north to Gigondas
