With two stars in France’s leading wine guide, Revue du Vin de France’s Le Guide des Meilleurs Vins de France, this is the highest-rated Crozes Domaine, reaffirming Maxime Graillot’s great work. With vines aged between 40 and 50 years on average, the Graillot terroirs are firing on all cylinders. Organically managed, gnarled and meticulously manicured vines reach up from a sea of smooth, rolled stones like the hands of an old vigneron. They are rooted on the Terrasse des Chassis in Pont-de-l’Isère, where the soil was formed by ancient alluvial deposits of sand, gravel and river stones. 

The grapes were loaded (crushed without destemming) into lined concrete vats for a two- to five-day pre-ferment maceration. After natural fermentation, the wine was aged in used François Frères barriques (between one and seven years old) purchased from some of the finest Estates in Burgundy. Since the 2011 vintage, 20-hectolitre Stockinger ovals have also played a quiet yet growing role. This is a beautifully rounded, classic Graillot Crozes with bundles of energy and finesse; a super Northern Rhone Syrah that recalls the Domaine’s finest vintages. A bargain. 

With two stars in France’s leading wine guide, Revue du Vin de France’s Le Guide des Meilleurs Vins de France, this is the highest-rated Crozes Domaine, reaffirming Maxime Graillot’s great work. With vines aged between 40 and 50 years on average, the Graillot terroirs are firing on all cylinders. Organically managed, gnarled and meticulously manicured vines reach up from a sea of smooth, rolled stones like the hands of an old vigneron. They are rooted on the Terrasse des Chassis in Pont-de-l’Isère, where the soil was formed by ancient alluvial deposits of sand, gravel and river stones. 

The grapes were loaded (crushed without destemming) into lined concrete vats for a two- to five-day pre-ferment maceration. After natural fermentation, the wine was aged in used François Frères barriques (between one and seven years old) purchased from some of the finest Estates in Burgundy. Since the 2011 vintage, 20-hectolitre Stockinger ovals have also played a quiet yet growing role. This is a beautifully rounded, classic Graillot Crozes with bundles of energy and finesse; a super Northern Rhone Syrah that recalls the Domaine’s finest vintages. A bargain. 

“Brooding black cherry and spice nose with some olive, crushed rock and pepper. There’s a hint of cured meat, too. The palate is powerful and rich with olive and meat savouriness under the sleek black fruits. Such energy and depth.”

The limited production La Guiraude is Graillot’s tête de cuvée—made only in vintages where the wines exhibit particularly intense and age worthy personalities. It’s a barrel selection, so the winemaking is the same as the classic Crozes, although the chosen casks age longer in both barrel and bottle. The Graillots are quick to point out that La Guiraude is not necessarily seen as a better wine than the Domaine’s Crozes; instead, it is typically more powerful, spicier, and perhaps calling for longer cellaring. There is serious depth and plenty of fine tannins, yet it’s already seductive, offering notable drinking pleasure and complexity right now. But of course, there is also plenty of stuffing and the tannins to ensure age-worthiness. It will be even better with another decade (or more) in the cellar.

In 2008, Alain and Maxime Graillot took mass-selection cuttings from the recently retired Raymond Trollat, a storied grape-grower and winemaker whose vineyards lie in Saint-Joseph's historic heartland of Saint-Jean-de-Muzols. Trollat identified these vines as Sérine, a selection believed to be an old type of Syrah that was practically wiped out of the northern Rhône when new, more productive, disease-resistant clones became available.

The Graillots planted the cuttings on a tiny 0.2 hectares of sandy soil in Beaumont-Monteux, near Maxime's core vineyard. As the name suggests, the vines are on their own roots (ungrafted)—the name Vignes Franches refers to franc de pied vines. There are just six rows, and now that the vines are fruitful, the wine was made in a single six-year-old Stockinger foudre. The grapes were mostly destemmed, and the wine aged for as long as Maxime saw fit; there is no commercial impetus with this wine—one reason why it has taken us a while to get an allocation!

We only found out about this wine when it was served to us blind by Romain Guiberteau over lunch. We immediately started pestering Max for a few bottles. With so many variables in play—vine age, clone, terroir, yield, season—Graillot is not ready to draw any hard-and-fast conclusions on how this wine differs from his 'classic' Crozes-Hermitage. So far, he sees a deeper mineral seam, and the wine has lovely purity and very fine tannins. This wine is already on its way to becoming another Graillot benchmark.

This Cornas is drawn from the vines of a grower the Graillot family has known for decades. There are three parcels: 25% is from a 20-year-old site on the slopes of the great Cornas lieu-dit Les Chaillots; La Sabarotte (with 35-year-old vines) contributes another 25%; and La Côte (80- to 90-year-old vines, on a 50% gradient) makes up the other half. All are on hillsides where the soils are very rich in granite. The vines have always been organically managed by the owner/grower, Elie Bancel—one of the great characters of the Rhône. Although it is made from purchased fruit, Max and Thomas are quick to point out that they could not manage the vines any better themselves! They also retain the final say on when the grapes are harvested and send their own team to do the picking.

The wine was crafted à la Maxime’s Lises Crozes-Hermitage, save for the addition of a few used 600-litre casks. The whole bunch component was similarly around 25% (depending on the vintage), and the wine was released with an additional year of age).

Maxime Graillot and Thomas Schmittel’s youthful, early-drinking Crozes-Hermitage is sourced primarily from a mature, gravelly, organically farmed site in Pont-de-l’Isère. This site is owned and managed by a good friend and neighbour of the Graillot clan, and the vigneron and producer work closely together. This collaboration has seen the Equinoxe cuvée reach ever-greater heights. The fully destemmed grapes fermented in concrete tanks and large wooden tronconique vats (with a degree of carbonic maceration) and matured for nine months in the same vessel.

This is gorgeously fleshy, fruit-forward kind of Northern Rhone Syrah. A short, nine-day maceration has brought brightly flowing flavours of hedgerow fruits and red-cherry tang matched by nuances of wispy smoke and a snappy, refreshing structure.

Equis’ Saint-Joseph is drawn from two parcels on the steep, granitic slopes of Saint-Jean-de-Muzols, the historic heart of Saint-Joseph opposite the hill of Hermitage. Three-quarters of the blend comes from Syrah planted in the 1980s, while the remainder of the vines were planted in the 1950s. The Desbos family organically farms both parcels without herbicides, and both lie on steep gradients that necessitate work by hand and horse only.

The winemakers work with around 20 to 30% whole bunches, and the wine matured for one year in used ex-Burgundy 228-litre oak casks for 11 months, followed by six months in tronconique. Bottled unfiltered, it’s a layered, rocky style of St-Jo, with taut red and blue fruits complemented by crushed stone, dried dark flowers and iron filing nuances. Proper old-school Northern Rhône.

Alain Graillot’s white Crozes-Hermitage is a silky yet vibrant blend of 80% Marsanne and 20% Roussanne, pressed as bunches and fermented with indigenous yeasts in a mix of one-year-old, 600-litre demi-muids and stainless steel. The fruit comes from a 2.7-hectare plot on the deep alluvial soils of Pont-de-l’Isère, in the southern sector of the Crozes-Hermitage appellation. The nature of the soils and low yields from the old vines (now reaching 40 years of age) prompt Maxime to maintain freshness and compensate for the richness of fruit—particularly the Marsanne—by arresting malolactic conversion. He bottles under screwcap for the same reason. The structure and energy of the wine ebbs and flows between vintages; 2024 is on the punchy, citrus-salted and floral end of the spectrum. Already delicious, it will develop more honeyed richness with short term (three to five years) aging.