To Fall in Love, Drink This by Alice Feiring

Author:Alice Feiring
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scribner
Published: 2022-08-09T00:00:00+00:00

DRINK THIS

Dard & Ribo

Crozes-Hermitage

Grape: Syrah

Where: Crozes-Hermitage, Northen Rhône, France

There’s mystery, maybe a little fizz, horse dander, like sinew, like a sleek racehorse with muscle with punch, and silkiness, but yet also classic blueberry and animal and muscle and just that mystery that lurks under the crust. The last sip on this wine is truly the best, so cheat, and decant.

I like to think I’m vaccinated against hero worship. Yet I had to buttress my immunity to visit the notoriously standoffish Northern Rhône winemakers René-Jean Dard and François Ribo. When I first tasted their syrahs in the late nineties, my response was a double take so hard that I gave myself whiplash. I had never tasted anything like that from the North and immediately swore I’d visit the vineyard. The more I encountered those wines (mostly in Paris), the more I had to concede the two were gods of the winemaking kind.

Why is one drawn to one wine over another? What does it say about one’s personality? Or, more specifically, my personality? I thought about the Northern Rhône’s rugged landscape from which gorgeous syrah could be pressed. The region is not nearly as popular as Bordeaux or Burgundy, and that puzzles me. Oh, there are plenty of people grabbing the best bottles of Rhônes on the auction market; the greatness is recognized, but it’s not an every-person people pleaser. Depending on the place, the grape may give savory more than sweet, muscle more than fruit, and bone more than fat. Some like more fruit, some like something gentler. Each to our own. I often visualize the wine’s taste as sparks that fly when striking one rock against another, and I like that.

As Dard and Ribo spoke little English and my French is limited at best, I asked a local friend to attempt to schedule an appointment for me. I knew that the duo was famous for being reclusive and difficult. Why would they consider me so special? What hubris, I chastised myself. The friend told me, “I said you were a friend who was an American wine journalist. Ribo asked me what your last name was. I didn’t know! That’s when he hung up on me.”

“You’re kidding me, right?” I asked. “He actually hung up on you?”

Having other appointments in the area, I held my breath and drove down from Burgundy, where I had been, marveling at the landscape transforming from alabaster limestone to smoky granite. The Rhône region, south of the Beaujolais, west of the Alps, and just north of Provence, is a large, bisected region. The North and the South have little in common except a mighty river that runs through both, and they suffer the fierce winds that whoosh in from Africa. Differences? Those are more plentiful. Soils and grapes have little overlap. The South is lush; the North is angular. While Châteauneuf is the fanciest wine in the South, up North there’s a string of a vineyard hierarchy, starting with Hermitage, Côte Rôtie, Cornas, Saint-Joseph, and Crozes-Hermitage. And steep? To visit many a vineyard, hiking shoes are needed.

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