This Week’s Tasting: Rhone Rangers
2010 Winderlea Dundee Hills Pinot Noir Vignette: Invertebrate Terroir
This Week’s Tasting:
Wednesday, August 8th, 5:00pm - 7:00pm
60 State Street, 7th Floor
We have an exciting tasting this week. As a fan of the wines from the Rhone Valley, I am pleased to show American versions of these wines, which I find more interesting than the more familiar Chardonnays and Cabernets.
If you are unfamiliar with the term, Rhone Rangers are American winemakers who promote the use of grape varietals grown in France’s Rhone Valley. The Rangers began in California in the 1980s, but did not really catch on with consumers. The movement received some further attention in the late 1990s when the Perrin family, proprietors of Chateau de Beaucastel, one of the two or three best estates in Chateauneuf du Pape, founded Tablas Creek Vineyard in Paso Robles, in partnership with their American wine importer. They also began a nursery with grape vine cuttings from Beaucastel itself, which they both sell to other growers and use to make their own wines.
In the southern Rhone, the wines are almost always blends, while northern reds are nearly all Syrah, and the whites, if not single varietals are two or three at the most. However, in America, winemakers are free to make either single varietals or blends at their will. While the Rhone Ranger are now represented in a number of winemaking states, all of this weeks wines are from California.
