Crozes-Hermitage La Guiraude

Serve with cheese and meat platters or prime steak.

100% Syrah from Graillot's 18 ha of vineyards in Crozes-Hermitage. The soils are gravel and old alluvium. Like all of his wines, grapes are hand-harvested and farmed organically.

Grapes are vinified with their stems (20-30% whole grapes) for three weeks in stainless steel vats, preceded by a cold maceration without sulphur. The wine is then racked off its lees with up to 50% being aged in small young Burgundy casks before being blended and bottled a year or so later.

Alain Graillot is well known to wine lovers throughout the world and is universally regarded as one of the most talented producers not only in the Rhône but in the whole of France. What is extraordinary is that he has built his reputation and fame in just 15 short years and in an appellation that was until recently seriously despised by the cognoscenti. He has proved that even (or should we say particularly) from the flat land near the Isère river confluence it is possible to make rich concentrated reds that demonstrate everything that is exciting about the Syrah grape - the explosive black fruit the aromatic intensity the pepper and spice complexity all supported by crisp acidity and good tannins. They are difficult to resist young but patient cellaring is well-rewarded. Graillot began making wine in 1985 having tired of life as Marketing Manager for a large French agricultural equipment company. He was lucky to benefit from the advice of friends such as Paul Jaboulet Jean-Louis Grippat and Jacques Seysses of Domaine Dujac in Burgundy and immediately struck vinous gold. This led him in 1988 to buy the vineyards he had previously rented to which he has since added land in Saint-Joseph and even a few vines on the Hermitage hill - just enough to make 2 barrels a year! The quality of Graillot wines is now legendary and he has become the father-figure to a whole new generation of young Rhône producers. And if appellations such as Crozes-Hermitage and Saint-Joseph now offer some of the best wine values in the Rhône it is in no little part thanks to Alain's groundbreaking work.