★★★ Three Star Domaine (one of only six in the Northern Rhône) “What work has been done since the purchase in 2011 of this emblematic estate by François Pinault! All means have been implemented to restore this vineyard to the place it should occupy. The consistency of the wines over the past four years is remarkable: we have awarded the estate the third star.” La Revue du Vin de France Not only is Château-Grillet “one of the greatest wines of France,” as La Revue du Vin de France puts it; it is also one of the most inimitable and smallest of France’s historic terroirs. Recently, Dan Keeling penned a thoughtful article in Noble Rot Issue 33 in which he described Grillet as “…arguably France’s most paradisiacal vineyard and enigmatic white wine.” We have been fortunate to visit the vineyard on a number of occasions. Perched on the hillsides of the northern Rhône, it is indeed an enchanting (and mindblowing) vineyard, and under the current ownership, it has a fairy-tale ending to match its mythical past. While Château-Grillet is famed for its uncanny ability to age—William Kelley recently posted an image of a late 1970s Grillet that looked impossibly bright—it is also a remarkably distinctive wine. A wine of place rather than varietal expression, a wine from a terroir that delivers more restraint and minerality than we generally expect of even the very best Condrieu. As Rhône authority Matt Walls has written, "Château-Grillet tends to be less aromatically effusive and marginally less full-bodied than most Condrieu, but it has an even greater sense of salinity, intensity and tension on the palate." In short, the terroir and vine material here deliver a wine where even the grape variety itself (Viognier) is unrecognisable. While 2022 and 2023 were both warm and dry years, the salinity and intensity of this powerful terroir have brought impeccable freshness and structure, without a trace of heaviness. These are wines of gripping intensity, rocky, iodine-flecked characters, tight-wound textures and remarkable length. You can read more about Château-Grillet here. If your budget stretches to French wine at the highest level, Grillet is one of those rare bottles that genuinely rewrites expectations.