Domaine de la Ville Rouge

The domaine’s own history is short and specific. Since 1919, it says, four generations of viticulteurs-arboriculteurs, vine and fruit-tree growers, have followed one another at Mercurol. A British merchant’s profile adds the start of it: Paul Girard took over his stepfather’s orchards that year and began to plant vines, and he was among the founding members of the cooperative at Tain l’Hermitage. For a small family in the Drôme that was the sensible life. The cooperative made and sold the wine; the family grew fruit.

The turn came in 2006, the first year the whole crop was vinified at the domaine. Sébastien Girard makes the wine; Audrey, co-manager, runs the visits and the tastings and does most of the explaining, and the visitors who write about the domaine mostly write about her. The two of them describe the place as à taille humaine, human-sized, and it is: twenty hectares at Mercurol, plus a little Saint-Joseph across the river.

South and east of the Hermitage hill the old courses of the rivers left broad terraces of rounded stones, the cailloutis roulés, bedded in red clay. This is where most of the domaine’s Crozes-Hermitage grows, on what the Girards call the plains at the south of the appellation: gentle relief, free-draining stony ground over clay that holds water through the summer. It gives Syrah roundness and fruit more than the granite of the northern Crozes slopes does, and the family’s aim is to keep that fruit fresh.

Higher up, on the wooded clay hills of Mercurol, are the parcels for their IGP wines: Viognier and Chardonnay for a white, Syrah, Marselan and Pinot Noir for a red, more aromatic and easier. Across the river, the Saint-Joseph is a different world again. The red, Cuvée du Potier, comes from vines over eighty years old on the slopes along the “chemin de Saint-Joseph” at Tournon, the cradle of the appellation; the white, Lenny, is Marsanne and Roussanne from granite hillsides, “aussi fin que le granit qui l’a vue pousser,” as fine as the granite it grew on.

The conversion began in 2009 with organic farming, certified for the 2012 vintage. In 2013 the Girards went further and converted the whole domaine to biodynamics, certified by Biodyvin in 2018. Their own summary of what that means is practical: watch the natural cycles instead of forcing them; strengthen the vine’s own defences instead of protecting it chemically; feed the soil with the biodynamic preparations and with composted manure only; work with the rhythms of the moon and planets. They describe it as a commitment they will pass to their children, and not as a fashion.

In the cellar they pick ripe, ferment gently and limit oenological inputs. The range shows a taste for experiment. Terre d’Éclat is Syrah from forty-five-year-old vines raised in barrel; Paul is old-vine Syrah raised in amphora; Nathan is Marsanne and Roussanne in stoneware and barrel; and Mal(grès) Tout is pure Roussanne fermented and aged in a stoneware egg and then bottled in stoneware.

Un vin doit refléter son terroir, sa saison, et les mains qui l’ont accompagné. (A wine should reflect its ground, its season and the hands that went with it.)

Domaine de la Ville Rouge

Inspiration is all Syrah from vines of about twenty-five years on the pebbles and red clay, kept away from new oak so the fruit and the place do the talking. The domaine’s own note describes black fruit and spice, a juicy palate and silky tannins, and calls it a fine picture of the appellation. That is fair. It is the wine to put on a list for people who expect Crozes to be either thin or overworked: dark-fruited, peppery, fresh, with the grip of the northern Rhône and none of the heaviness.

It is also a good argument for what the Girards did in 2006 and 2009. The same ground, farmed for the cooperative, would have produced grapes for a blend. Farmed biodynamically and bottled at home, it produces a wine you can recognise, from a family that you can visit, on appointment, five minutes off the A7.

The Syrah range is a ladder of vine age, and Inspiration sits on the second rung. Crozes j’adore comes from ten-year-old vines, cold-macerated and kept in steel for drinking young. Inspiration is the twenty-five-year-old vines, still raised in tank. Terre d’Éclat and Paul come from vines of about forty-five years, one in barrel and one in amphora, and the Saint-Joseph from vines past eighty. Tasting up the ladder shows what age does to Syrah on this ground: more depth and finer tannin, the same pepper and fruit underneath.