Saint-Joseph
multiple🍇 Rhône Valley
Reds and whites from the northern Rhône right bank.
The wine
On the right bank of the northern Rhône, Saint-Joseph stretches almost sixty kilometres in a narrow ribbon between Chavanay and Guilherand-Granges, straddling the Ardèche and Loire departments. AOC since June 15, 1956 — revised in 1994 to refocus the appellation on its true hillsides — it now covers fourteen hundred hectares dominated by light schist and gneiss soils resting on a granitic bedrock. Syrah, accounting for over eighty-five percent of production, yields reds of deep purple colour, with notes of blackcurrant and raspberry in youth that turn to liquorice, black pepper, and leather with age. The whites, made from Marsanne and Roussanne, unfurl floral noses lifted by honey and acacia. Served at sixteen degrees with lamb's liver, a marrow-bone côte de bœuf, or simply an Ardèche caillette, a Saint-Joseph offers the Rhône signature in a form more approachable and earlier-drinking than its prestigious neighbours.