As flippant
as the title may seem, Rhône is certainly on a very serious roll. 2016 will go down as another great Rhône vintage. As hard as it may be to believe, this vintage
is as good as and, in many cases, better than, 2015.
There is no hesitation from Southern Rhône
growers: Vieux Télégraphe describe it as
“magical”, Beaucastel as “idylllic and exceptional,” while Barroche’s Julien
Barrot recalls picking berries at harvest:
“Cinema grapes, they were so beautiful to look at!” So why all the
excitement? It was a dry rather than an excessively hot vintage. By and large days were sunny and nights
cool. Flowering was successful so the
crop was of good size and ripening homogenous.
Rain in mid-September ensured that the vines completed their ripening
cycle before harvest at the end of the month. Certainly when tasting the wines
you get no sense of a stressed season. For these 2016s are flowing and
silken. Notable for their incredibly
fine tannins, belying a discrete intensity, the wines have a generous, alluring
quality to them with enough of a pique of freshness to provide lift. Comparisons have been drawn with 1990, 2007
but most of all 2010. Though it is every
bit as good if not better than the latter, we feel it is a very different
vintage. Acidities are as fresh as 2010
but the wines feel more charming in 2016 and alcohol, surprisingly, was lower
ranging between 14 to 14.5%. Many growers have made their most abundant and
what they believe to be their best vintage.
A great year to tuck away in the cellar or drink young, avoiding, of
course, Châteauneuf’s infamous adolescent period between three and eight years
after bottle.
Beware of
letting the Southern Rhône take all of the plaudits. For the North have been highly successful,
the only blots on the copy book being early summer mildew and hail on the 17th
April in Hermitage. This, unfortunately, reduced the crop in some parts by
half. However being early in the season
and with the stones round and small, wood was not damaged and quality not
effected. The crop might not be quite as
abundant here as in the South, even in areas outside of Hermitage not effected
by hail, but the quality is not far off.
Guillaume Clusel lauds the “beautiful fruit” of 2016 while André Perret
thinks it’s a vintage that is “all about finesse, with the structure to
support.” These are ripe, fresh,
distinctly aromatic wines that have substance to back up their charm. They show
remarkable harmony and style, factors which should stand them in good stead for
the long term. These will drink younger
than the blockbuster 2015s, for sure, but their impeccable balance suggest
great ageing potential.
As for the
whites, they are open and attractive offering more finesse than the 2015s but
not quite the vivid freshness of the 2014s, they sit somewhere neatly in
between. They will give a lot of
pleasure but in the end it will be the great reds of 2016 that will deservedly
make the headlines.
Giles Burke-Gaffney
Discover this latest vintage online, by clicking here.