Already one of his region’s most progressive young growers, Olivier Klein continues to chip away at every stereotype levelled at the Côtes du Rhône appellation. Andrew Jefford once described a Réméjeanne red as tasting like “strawberries metamorphosed into wine”. While generalising, we like to think Jefford’s comment speaks of the disarming purity that pervades all this grower’s wines. Grown amid the oak-forested foothills of the Cévennes, the Klein family’s wines are sculpted by rocky limestone soils and the cooling effects of altitude. Meanwhile, Olivier’s graceful touch in the cellar borrows as much from the zeitgeist of the north as it does from the south. His elegantly formed low-sulphur reds are superbly fresh, highly refined wines brimming with supple fruit, vivid freshness and lip-smacking, high-country character. Réméjeanne is equally unusual in the Côtes du Rhône arena for the quality and energetic style of its white wines. Attracted by Sabran’s limestone soils, Olivier Klein’s grandfather, François, planted the domaine’s first Bourboulenc vines on the property’s cooler, east-facing slopes in the 1970s. Incremental plantings of Clairette, Roussanne and Grenache Blanc have followed, resulting in the deliciously incisive, citrus- and white-plum-charged Les Chèvrefeuilles Blanc. His father’s pulsating Les Arbousiers bottling, a blend of the estate’s oldest vines, marries anise-scented fruit with layered fruit-tannin textures and mineral bite. The newest label in the portfolio is a fabulous traditional-method wine based on the same varieties used in Les Chèvrefeuilles. There are not many things Olivier Klein does not do very, very well—as this surprising and delicious sparkling Rhône attests.