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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.