In the northern Rhone Valley, good vintages follow on from outstanding vintages which themselves come after top quality vintages. Challenging vintages are a thing of the past, at least since 2008, and Syrah always ripens, or almost always. This truth is in stark contrast to the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. At the risk of repeating myself, the 2019s from the northern Rhone are so delicious that they deserve your utmost attention. On the hillsides of Gervans, Erôme and Larnage, as well as in the true Chassis area, in years when it fully ripens, Syrah manages to produce wines that tend to resemble those grown on the neighbouring hillside of Hermitage. The wines are not only fleshy and concentrated, they have the multi-dimensional characters of a great vintage. If you taste Saint Joseph and Crozes-Hermitage side by side, obviously you can see the typical characters of the vintage, but the styles are light years apart – this is a good way of distinguishing between the influences of the soil and those of the climate, both of which are brought together in the French concept of terroir. In Crozes, the fruit, fleshiness and texture are predominant, in the most noble possible way. In Saint Joseph, it’s more about the nose with the marvellous aromatics exuded by vines that have to fight to find water and nutrients in the granite hillsides. Taste wines from the northern Rhone, decipher them and develop a passion for them – this is a wonderful piece of French viticulture.
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