About this WINE
Viognier
A white grape variety originating in the Northern Rhône and which in the last ten years has been increasingly planted in the Southern Rhône and the Languedoc.
It is a poor-yielding grape that is notoriously fickle to grow, being susceptible to a whole gamut of pests and diseases. Crucially it must be picked at optimum ripeness - if harvested too early and under-ripe the resulting wine can be thin, dilute and unbalanced, while if picked too late then the wine will lack the grape's distinctive peach and honeysuckle aroma. It is most successfully grown in the tiny appellations of Château-Grillet and Condrieu where it thrives on the distinctive arzelle granite-rich soils. It is also grown in Côte Rôtie where it lends aromatic richness to the wines when blended with Syrah.
Viognier has been on the charge in the Southern Rhône and the Languedoc throughout the 1990s and is now a key component of many white Côtes du Rhône. In Languedoc and Rousillon it is increasingly being bottled unblended and with notable success with richly fragrant wines redolent of overripe apricots and peaches and selling at a fraction of the price of their Northern Rhône cousins.
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Description
From older vines directly behind the revamped Chavanay winery Les Chaillets is a lieu –dit, its vines on unfailingly steep slopes. Aged for eight months in 30% new wood, this is very rich and complete Condrieu,
Energetic, dynamic and likeable, Yves Cuilleron is seen as the most influential and, at times, the most outspoken of the Northern Rhône producers. The completely rebuilt winery at Chavanay is testament to both his success and ambition; Yves’ skill lies in disseminating the minutiae of ‘terroir’ (now, in my view, with even better results as the use of new wood has been relaxed a little). ‘Tendu’ seemed to be his most popular adjective used to describe the 2011s: ‘tight-knit, nervous, and with potential’ is my rather prosaic and, in all probability, not entirely accurate translation, a little close to a personification perhaps.
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