2021 E. Guigal Condrieu La Doriane

This year’s visit to Guigal brought some intriguing news. To start with, the 2022 Côte-Rôtie La Reynarde will be the inaugural vintage of the fourth “La” within the iconic Guigal line-up. Named after the stream running between Côte Blonde and Côte Brune, the grapes are sourced from a 1.6-hectare steep plot within the Fongeant lieu-dit. After new vines were first planted between 2015 and 2019, Philippe Guigal bottled a single barrel separately as of the 2019 vintage. To provide better context and understanding before tasting the inaugural 2022 La Reynarde, he poured the 2019, 2020 and 2021 vintage samples for context. Each year, a greater proportion of fruit from these fairly young vines was ready to be used in the blend. While the fragrant 2019 had me thinking of a La Mouline with a little kick, tasting the more structured and denser 2020 and 2021 stylistically placed the La Reynarde closer to La Turque. Another interesting adaptation of the Guigal wines includes a change in cooperage. “More than 20 years ago, my father Marcel and I were looking for a partner to set up our family cooperage,” Guigal explained. “In 2003, we teamed up with a renowned cooper. One of the advantages of using their methods was that they made our wines more open and accessible – a great advantage in cooler years. Given the changing climate and increasingly higher temperatures, we started to feel that another solution was needed. After trying out many options, even from Austria and Slovenia, we landed on a partnership with a high-end cooperage located in Beaune. Not only do their barrels impart less vanilla flavor to our wines, but they also prevent the wines from unnecessarily opening up. The 2020 vintage saw a mixture of cooperages, while the 2021 will be the first vintage to fully show the in-depth work we achieved with this barrel change.” What has not changed is the heavy use of new oak in Guigal’s winemaking. “We stay true to the Guigal house style,” Guigal firmly points out. Having had dozens of spectacular mature Guigal wines from the past three decades, there isn’t much to hold against that stylistic choice; with the few exceptions of less ripe vintages, Guigal wines can handle the new oak. But there’s a caveat: The reds need time. In the case of the outstanding 2022 Côte-Rôtie La Landonne, time means holding off at least until 2037 to pop the first cork. Whether or not there is a sufficient number of consumers out there willing to wait that long is a different question.