A Wine for St Joseph's Day

Tomorrow is the Feast of Saint Joseph, so I'll blog about the wines from the appelation of St Joseph in Northern Rhone. The appellation is named after the saint whose feast we celebrate tomorrow and it has an illustrious past. Originally known as Vin de Mauves, and also mentioned in Victor Hugo's Les Misérables, the wine from St.-Joseph was a favourite in the French court of Louis XII (1498-1515) who owned a vineyard in St.-Joseph known as Clos de Tournon. In 1668 the first official record of vineyards in St. Joseph occur. The modern-day St.-Joseph begins its history around 1916, but it didn't gain its own AOC until 1956.

The wine in the picture comes from Pierre Gaillard who learnt his craft alongside Guigal as they created Guigal's La Turque, now a trophy Cote-Rotie wine worth thousands of dollars. Gaillard scraped together money and bought his first plot - Clos de Cuminaille (from which the above bottle came) in St Joseph in 1981. The land had a 30 degree slope to it, but he was able to carve out some terraces so he could use a tractor.  His first vintage in 1987 was from this granitic plot and it had now become his flagship wine. Gaillard skilfully employs oak to coax luxuriant and extremely seductive flavours, but flavours that never lose sight of the individuality of their originating terroirs.