Aged on the lees for four months, and fermented with indigenous yeast, this wine has a ton of character for such a great value, and boxes well above its weight class. Lionel also has 8 distinct plots of Sauvignon Blanc, and each is picked and fermented separately. A cold, slow fermentation preserves freshness and aromatic purity. The soils are mostly limestone and sand.

Guigal’s Hermitage Rouge is a true expression of the Northern Rhône Valley, where the red wines have a profile unlike anywhere else in the world, an irresistible combination of warm flavors of red and black fruit and exotic spice notes that bring great pleasure.

Hermitage is one of France’s most spectacular and famous appellations within the Rhône, producing small quantities of extraordinarily intense and ageworthy red wine and tiny amounts of dry white. The entire vineyard consists of 309 acres planted on a single granite hillside on the banks of the Rhône. In Guigal’s hands, the Hermitage Rouge is a racy wine, that manages to remain seductive.

What a story. Etienne Guigal, working in the cellars of a local winery, is swimming in the Rhone river off the docks near the Château d’Ampuis. He meets a lovely girl, who works as a maid at the Château d’Ampuis, a historic property whose oldest sections date to the 11th century, where Kings of France have visited and slept, and symbol of the town of Ampuis and the world-renowned Côte-Rôtie vineyard area for ten centuries. In 1995, 7 years after Etienne passed away, his son Marcel Guigal purchased the Château, and spent 11 years restoring it, with over 100 people working on the project, all overseen by France’s Chief Architect of Historic Monuments. 

Early on, when the Guigal family learned that there was at one time a wine produced with the Château d’Ampuis name, and they were able to trace the vineyards that were used in this original wine, they decided to produce an exceptional wine that would showcase the best that Côte-Rôtie has to offer.

Condrieu is the ancestral home of the Viognier vine and is the source of one of the world’s most exotic white wines. In the mid-20th century, only 20 acres of Viognier remained in Condrieu, leaving the grape and the appellation in serious jeopardy. Guigal was instrumental in bringing this appellation back from near extinction, and today supplements the grapes from their own vineyards with grapes purchased from numerous small growers, ultimately vinifying nearly one-third of the entire appellation.

La Doriane is a luxury cuvée of Condrieu that the Guigals have produced since the 1994 vintage. A great success since the first vintage, the wine always seems richly oaked and very fruity when young, transforming in 3-4 years into a seamlessly complex, aromatic and vibrant wine. La Doriane contradicts the accepted wisdom that Condrieu does not age well.

A result of its quality, Guigal’s Saint-Joseph Lieu Dit Rouge comes from the “Saint-Joseph” vineyard that gives the appellation its name. This site convinced the Guigals to work in Saint-Joseph and help to restore the historic perception of Saint-Joseph as an appellation of utmost quality. The 100% Syrah wine has complex and deep black fruit, floral, spice and mineral characteristics. Despite its concentration and powerful attack, the wine retains the trademark elegance that Saint-Joseph offers.

The Montepulciano Marina Cvetic represents an intense and remarkable expression of one of the historical vines of Abruzzo.  The 100% Montepulciano comes from 8 of the estate’s top parcels and truly represents the summit of what Montepulciano can achieve. Villa Gemma may be the most famous Montepulciano produced by Masciarelli, the only Italian wine to win the coveted Tre Bicchieri award 14 times (and counting), but many view the Marina Cvetic Montepucliano as its equal in quality, differing only in style, and often benefiting from the fact it is blended from parcels crossing a range of altitudes and soils.

Lucente is the second wine of Luce, a wine with contemporary style, immediate and great pleasure, and like its elder sibling, an authentic interpretation of Montalcino and the Luce estate.

After the first strict selection of the very best grapes for Luce, the next selection is used for Lucente and is often coming from the younger vineyards planted in the Luce estate. Lucente represents a more approachable expression of the estate’s unique terroir.

One of three single-vineyard Cru Côte Rôtie in the Guigal estate, La Landonne is a remarkable expression of terroir and one of the world’s most coveted wines. And for good reason, as La Landonne is situated on one of the steepest vineyards of the Côte Brune, a 45 degree slope that remarkably requires harvesters to start picking from the bottom of the vineyard and work their way up, placing grape bunches in bins that are set on sleds and dragged up the hill. Along with its position at the northern end of the Côte Brune and the fact it is the last vineyard to ripen, La Landonne is the mirror of the feminine and voluptuous La Mouline: it is a wine of driving power, defined by its dark fruit and structure. Marcel Guigal assembled this vineyard over 10 years though parcel-by-parcel acquisitions from 17 growers. The vineyard was totally replanted in 1975, the year of Philippe Guigal’s birth, and the first vintage was 1978.

La Mouline is historically the oldest vineyard site in Cote-Rotie, with walls dating back 2,400 years. Today its vines are also the oldest in the region, averaging 90 years of age, with the oldest dating back to plantings in the 1890s, from the first plantings after phylloxera. Acquired in 1963 from the Dervieux family, La Mouline was Guigal’s first single-vineyard Côte- Rôtie, and the inaugural vintage was 1966.  This 1-HA vineyard is located on the lighter soils of the Cote Blonde,and is planted to about 11% Viognier, aspects that give La Mouline its telltale aromatic complexity and additional softness and roundness; it is often called the most feminine of Guigal’s Côte-Rôties.

La Turque is Guigal’s most recent addition to the single-vineyard Cru Côte-Rôties, coming over as part of their purchase of the Vidal-Fleury firm in 1980. La Turque had produced outstanding wines in the 19^th and early 20^th centuries, but had not been used for wine production for nearly 50 years. The Guigals acquired the vineyard and re-planted it in 1980 and 1981, based on Etienne Guigal’s memory of the quality of the wines it produced during his tenure at Vidal-Fleury. The first vintage was the magnificent 1985. In both position and style, it sits between La Mouline and La Landonne: the complex soils lend an exotic character to La Turque, and its concentration and elegance exhibit the virility of the Côte Brune with the subtlety and femininity of the Côte Blonde.

Crozes-Hermitage brings you into the Northern Rhône Valley, where the red wines have a profile unlike anywhere else in the world, an irresistible combination of warm flavors of red and black fruit, exotic spice notes, and certainly in the case of Crozes, with pleasure and approachability in youth.

It’s important to note that most of Crozes-Hermitage is produced from the plains to the south and east of Hermitage, and these wines tend to be straightforward. Guigal’s approach is to make a more serious Crozes that also has vigor, intensity and depth. In Guigal’s hands, Crozes becomes a wine that delivers quality and pleasure far beyond its price.

James Healy and Ivan Sutherland will tell you that it’s hard for them to grow much Chardonnay at the extremely high quality level they want for this wine. As with their Section 94 and Pinot Noir, the wine is distinctive due to extraordinary vineyard holdings, intense vineyard management geared towards low yields and hand-picked fruit, and long, low touch winemaking. The effect this work has on the Chardonnay, by nature the least expressive of these three grape varieties, is wild – the wine is intensely expressive, with loads of fruit, leesy character, and chalky minerality that is almost textural. As with all the wines they produce, it is considered a national standard bearer of a different shade.

Dog Point’s Pinot Noir is a head-turner because of the immense reputation they have as a Sauvignon Blanc producer. Their Pinot is not just good – it’s one of the very best in New Zealand, and truly world class. The intensive vineyard work they carry out to produce distinctive Sauvignon Blanc results in fantastically complex Pinot fruit when carried out in clay hillsides of Marlborough. And, in turn, their use of wild yeasts and long aging gives the wine a generosity and integration that provide both easy and intellectual pleasure.

Section 94 is one of the world’s most distinct wines, and regularly named New Zealand’s greatest Sauvignon Blanc. It’s so tough to place, which is extraordinary given that Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc is one of the most defined and recognizable wine styles in the world. The exotic smoky and spicy flavors mingling with floral and ripe citrus notes, textural roundness playing against cool and fresh raciness; it’s not about generalities of the grape variety or the region, it’s a very specific wine made to emphasize the qualities of a very special place.

Section 94 is Dog Point’s signature wine, an update on James’ Healy’s Te Koko, the barrel-fermented Sauvignon he created while at Cloudy Bay. The names refers to the singular parcel of old vines where the grapes are sourced.  Fruit is hand-picked at low yields (virtually unheard of in New Zealand), green harvested at times (totally crazy), and fermented entirely with native yeasts. The wine sees extended aging in barrel with virtually no intervention. High risk winemaking resulting in high reward individuality.

The Trebbiano Riserva Marina Cvetic represents the ultimate expression for the estate of one of the historical vines of Abruzzo.  Like Montepulciano, Trebbiano was once thought to be a workhorse grape without the potential to produce great wine. The interpretation of this wine is original and has a character. Marina Cvetic wines have full body and are elegant and are a “lone voice” for the most demanding and technical experts.

The Montepulciano Marina Cvetic represents an intense and remarkable expression of one of the historical vines of Abruzzo.  The 100% Montepulciano comes from 8 of the estate’s top parcels and truly represents the summit of what Montepulciano can achieve. Villa Gemma may be the most famous Montepulciano produced by Masciarelli, the only Italian wine to win the coveted Tre Bicchieri award 14 times (and counting), but many view the Marina Cvetic Montepucliano as its equal in quality, differing only in style, and often benefiting from the fact it is blended from parcels crossing a range of altitudes and soils.

Guigal’s Vignes de l’Hospice is one of the finest sites in the Northern Rhone Valley. This steeply terraced vineyard used to be divided into three, but Guigal now owns majority of this parcel in order to restore perception of Saint-Joseph as an appellation of utmost quality. In fact, Guigal is often asked when they will produce a fourth “LaLa,” and their response is that their fourth single vineyard phenomenon of the Northern Rhone is already being produced: the Vignes de l’Hospice.

Whites make up a small percentage of production in the Rhône, under 2%, but white wines are a little bit of a secret specialty at Guigal and today comprise 25% of their production. And for good reason, as the whites of the Northern Rhône are true discovery wines, immensely appealing and complex. They specifically display an expressiveness and brightness while also capturing the warmth of the area. Explosive and exotic floral and fruit aromas and flavors meld with intense mineral notes, and the silky, powerful concentration of flavors has an appealing roundness that finishes remarkably fresh.

Hermitage is one of France’s most spectacular and famous appellations, but Hermitage Blanc is one of the least-known yet most intriguing wines of the Rhône Valley. Composed primarily of Marsanne (95%) and small amounts of Roussanne (5%), it is relatively rare, accounting for only a small percentage of the production of the 309 acre Hermitage AOC.

Guigal’s Saint-Joseph Lieu Dit Blanc comes from the vineyard that gives the Saint-Joseph appellation its name, and is one of the finest sites in the Northern Rhone Valley. Made in minuscule quantities, the Lieu Dit Blanc is one of the most original and distinctive whites in the Rhone.

Guigal believes, as do a number of top producers working in the area, that Saint-Joseph will be one of the great stories in the next few decades, reaching the renown it received several hundred years ago. Saint-Joseph Blanc is a serious wine, with weight and complexity, and is deeply reflective of its vineyard sites. A seamless balance of freshness and fruitiness, pleasure and interest, and flavors and structure. Guigal’s specialty in whites is especially evident in this wine.