Domaine D’Andezon – Côte du Rhone, A Value Southern Rhone Masquerading as a Northern Rhone

Hello Everyone! We love it when we wander into one of our favorite grocery stores, Trader Joe’s, and come across a new wine from an old favorite location. Trader Joe’s is unique in that they have a fair amount of wine brands that are made solely for Trader Joe’s, and also a lot of other good quality wines from a somewhat rotating stock, all at exceptional prices (translated: Trader Joe’s is a lot more than Two-Buck Chuck!) We had heard wonderful reviews of the 2007 vintage from the Rhone Valley of France – considered the “vintage of a lifetime” by no less than the esteemed Robert Parker. So we honed our initial search for Rhone Valley reds and found the 2007 Domaine D’Andezon Côte du Rhône for $9.99. You can expect to pay anywhere from $9.99 to $13.99 for this wine. Other Rhone names that we like include Guigal and Jaboulet, both of which are very easy to find.

We’ve both been fans of Rhone Valley wines for a long time now. We chose to serve the Paul Jaboulet Parallèle 45 – a nice, inexpensive Syrah-Grenache blend – at our wedding in 2001. One of our first case purchases was a mixed case of E. Guigal, from Bauer Wine on Newbury Street in Boston. As we’ve mentioned in previous posts, buying a case back then was a momentous occasion for us. The case consisted of 2 bottles of 1998 Côte Rôtie, 2 bottles of 1998 Crozes-Hermitage, 4 bottles of 1998 Gigondas, and 4 1999 Côtes du Rhône. At the time, we really couldn’t have told you very much about any of these wines, except that they alternated between powerful, full-bodied reds, and racy, spicy reds. And we knew that we liked them!

A brief description of the Rhone

The Rhone Valley in Southeastern France runs along the Rhone River and is bounded to the north by Burgundy and to the south by the regions of Languedoc-Roussillon and Provence. It is divided into two districts simply referred to as the Northern and Southern Rhone. The primary appellations (sub-regions) in the North, from north to south, are Côte-Rôtie, Condrieu, Chateau-Grillet, St. Joseph, Hermitage, Crozes-Hermitage, and Cornas. Continuing along south are Gigondas and Vacqueyras to the east, Chateauneuf-du-Pape, Lirac, and Tavel to the west. The remaining villages surrounding the Southern Rhone are referred to as the Côtes du Rhône (the word côte translates to hillside, or slope, in French).

The dominant red grape used in the Northern Rhone is Syrah, and the Southern Rhone wines are primarily Grenache, but also blending varying amounts of Cinsault, Mourvedre, Syrah, Carignan, and Gamay. There are different white grapes used in each district but that’s an article for another day.

The 2007 Domaine D’Andezon Côtes du Rhône is a blend of 90% Syrah and 10% Grenache from some very old vines, 40 and 60 years old respectively. This is a unique blend for a Southern Rhone since we typically expect much more Grenache than Syrah. After looking further into the rating for the 2007 Southern Rhone, we found that the rating is more about the Grenache than Syrah, but the growing season was great so both grapes benefited from it. Old vines are desirable because they have lower yields and the flavors are more concentrated. This wine had a good amount of spice and black pepper which we have come to expect from a Rhone. Additionally, it did have good concentrated dark fruit flavors and a medium body. Another unique aspect of Côtes du Rhone is that they are hearty wines without seeing a lot of oak aging.

We bought several bottles over a few visits, so this fell under the rating of we would buy a few bottles at a time. Unfortunately, we did get a bad bottle in one of the batches. The bad bottle was unbalanced, tasted alcoholic and had little of the fruit and pepper flavors left. With an alcohol content of 14%, high for France, this is a risk because the wine has fewer tannins for preservation. We poured it out and opened another bottle which turned out to be the wine that we were expecting. We hope that the remaining bottles are in good shape and will be drinking them before the weather gets too warm.

Drink what you like, like what you drink!

Rachel and Bryan Gavini