Châteauneuf Vs. Côte-Rôtie? | Guide to Northern vs Southern Rhône Wines

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Watch my RHONE WINE VIDEO SERIES:    • Guide to Châteauneuf-du-Pape Region &...  

Here on this channel, we look at ALL the best wine regions in the world so you get to know every one of them by their first name, and at the moment we’re looking at the Rhone Valley of France. We started this Rhone series last week with Chateauneuf du Pape, and we’re continuing today. From the small village of Chateauneuf, I want to take some altitude, give you a higher picture of the Rhone area. You may have heard that we divide the Rhone Valley into two distinct sub-areas that offer rather distinct wines too, the Northern Rhone, and the Southern Rhone. What is this all about? Let’s explain…

00:00 - North Vs South: Rhone Wine Intro
01:45 - What’s Northern Rhone About?
03:50 - Southern Rhone, the Valley Vineyards
06:30 - How are the wines different?

Top appellations in Northern Rhone are of course the Cote Rotie, Hermitage, Crozes-Hermitage, Saint-Joseph and Cornas for the reds, and Condrieu, Chateau-Grillet and Saint-Peray for the whites. Hardly any rosé is made there, the reds you can produce are too good and precious to make rosés instead. Soils are quite rocky here, a lot of granitic soils mixed with stone, shingle and clay.
Top appellations by reputation here are Chateauneuf du Pape and neighboring villages of Vacqueyras, Gigondas and Lirac, Rasteau for sweet wines, or Beaumes-de-Venise, and Tavel for intensely colored and flavored rosés.
They key difference to understand, is that Northern Rhone wines are based solely on 1 grape variety, at least for reds, and that’s Syrah. Most Hermitage, Cote Rotie, St-Joseph etc are 100% Syrah wines, that’s easy to understand.
In the South though, virtually no wine is made from a single varietal, a varietal wine would be the exception there, and certainly not made from 100% Syrah. They would contain SOME Syrah, but as a small component in a blend. Southern Rhone wines are BLENDS, from mainly 4 grapes: Grenache, Syrah, Mouvèdre and sometimes Carignan, known as the Rhone blend or GSM blend or GSMC blend.
Grenache, Mourvedre and Carignan have a completely different texture to Syrah, their flavors are completely different as well, so they are very different wines.