Vinsobres

Producing wines with a level of natural freshness few other regions can match, Vinsobres isas yet overshadowed by its better-known southern Rhône neighbours, discovers Matt Walls

- Matt Walls

There are some descriptors in wine that are always considered complimentary. ‘Fresh’ is one of them. Even in mature wines, it’s always considered a virtue. So it’s not surprising that claiming freshness as a characteristic of their wines is something many appellations do, including Vinsobres. But thanks to its unique natural setting – a northerly location, high altitude and, crucially, wind – its wines genuinely do have an aerial quality rarely found in the southern Rhône. No wonder the canny Louis Barruol of Château de St-Cosmehas just bought the 62ha Château de Rouanne there. ‘I’ve always loved the terroir; I’ve always adored Vinsobres,’ he says. ‘It was an opportunity I couldn’t miss.’

What exactly is freshness? Some use the word interchangeably with ‘acidity’, but it’s more complex than that. For a wine to be fresh it does require adequate acidity. But it also needs brightness and definition to its aromatics – add as much tartaric acid as you like to a vat of overripe, jammy wine but it will never be fresh. After these two principal traits, there are other contributing factors: salinity, inner tension, and a crisp tannic structure. The best Vinsobres have all of these.

Vinsobres might not be a household name, but it’s counted among the nine cru-level wines of the southern Rhône. At 35km northeast of Châteauneuf-du-Pape, it’s also the most northerly. It traces production back to Roman times, but it was the winter of 1956 that proved a turning point. In the south of France, temperatures dropped below -20°C, the cold accentuated by a fierce northerly Mistral wind that resulted in conditions so severe that many olive trees perished. Vineyards are quicker to establish than olive groves, so local farmers replaced the petrified trees with vines. And its renown began to grow.