Our Journal

Tasting our way around the Rhône

1st May, 2013

With the addition of some exciting new producers this year, it seemed like a fitting time to showcase our entire Rhône portfolio with a focus tasting yesterday.  Thank you to all who came along to taste the wines and meet with Nicolas Jaboulet (pictured with wines from his Nicolas Perrin range) – we thoroughly enjoyed welcoming you to our new offices.

The first producer in the Liberty Wines portfolio in 1997 was Domaine Marcel Richaud.  Richaud has been joined over the years by the likes of David Reynaud from Crozes-Hermitage, the Bréchet family from Châteauneuf-du-Pape, Gigondas and Lirac, and La Tour de Béraud in Nîmes. And it was Marcel Richaud who pointed us in the direction of the Cave de Cairanne as a source of excellent Southern Rhône wines.

New from the Northern Rhône we have Yoann François, a young winemaker who produces an ethereal Côte-Rôtie, as well as cheese, on his family estate; Anaïs and Julien of Domaine du Chêne, where they have brought new energy and new world winemaking experience to their parents’ estate; and Stéphane Robert of Domaine du Tunnel in St Péray, who makes a welcome return to our portfolio after an absence of 12 years with his impressively concentrated and expressive Cornas and Roussanne.

We have also recently teamed up with an old friend, Nicolas Jaboulet, whose new Northern Rhône venture Maison Nicolas Perrin shows just what a ‘micro-négociant’, working with many of the very best small growers in the Rhône, can achieve. His wines are superb examples of each appellation and display, like all the wines in our Rhône portfolio, the sort of verve and dynamism that makes this region so exciting.