Friday read: Hero of a thousand wine shelves
Philippe Guigal (pictured) is tying things up before escaping for his summer holiday. “Somebody said yesterday that I looked tired,” he says, “but I had tasted maybe 180 wines.” Among those, the Rhône producer assessed 35-40 samples – as every day of the year – for inclusion in his company E. Guigal’s basic red Côtes du Rhône blend.
It’s a fanatical devotion to quality that makes this relatively humble wine – retailing at around £13-14 – one of the most reliable offerings in many supermarkets and independent off-licences. Imported by Fells, it enjoys wide UK distribution.
Guigal’s father Marcel first blended the Côtes du Rhône in the late 1960s; he made the name of the company founded in 1946 by his own father, Etienne. Today they make between four and five million bottles of the entry-level Côtes du Rhône – around half of total production. But says Philippe Guigal, “The challenge isn’t to produce four million bottles of Côtes du Rhône but to achieve quality levels. It’s extremely challenging every year”.
The blend is composed from around 800 wines bought in from, on average, 400 producers. “Our selection rate is around one per cent,” says Guigal. Parcel selection can vary a lot by year. Around half of the blend or just over is always Syrah – “we’re northern-Rhône people making wine in the South,” he says – with most of the rest Grenache, and five per cent or less Mourvèdre.
Guigal works in the old-fashioned way with wine brokers who in turn deal with négociants. “First, the brokers sort the samples – they know it’s pointless sending us a basic quality,” says Guigal. “And if you go direct, then if the year is bad, it’s difficult to go back and refuse. So a broker handles all that.” But, he adds, “we recognise quality and pay for it”.
The flow of samples is constant: more intense from October to March, then slowing before starting up again in late April. Guigal tastes all of them, every day, along with his father, now aged 83, two other oenologists and winemaker Jacques Desvernois. They taste all the samples blind: “I don’t know if its 60hl or 600hl, from right or left bank, or the price,” says Guigal. “I don’t want to have these expectations.”
At the same time, over the course of the year, Guigal bring in batches of wine they’ve decided to buy, in lots from 50hl up to 750hl. Although the company has three hectares of cellars, all the batches are kept separate, requiring a lot of space. Meanwhile this July, says Guigal, “people are realising that 2026 will be significant in terms of volume and they won’t have enough space. So they need to offload wine to make space”.
Unusually, Guigal ages all its red Côtes du Rhône blend for three years. Pre-blends begin 18 months in advance of release, though final blends can be done almost at last moment. “For example, if I bring in 120hl of beautiful Mourvèdre and age it in two foudres, it’s a question of continuous thinking about how to find each component at its best before blending,” says Guigal.
Of course, Guigal must find time to taste other wines too. “I currently have 57 samples of Côte Rôtie 2023 to taste,” he says. “And we taste friends’ wines too – [Paul Jaboulet Aîné’s] Parallel 45, [Chapoutier’s] Belleruche and so on.” It sounds a punishing schedule. “We are bad French people – we don’t have time for a three-course lunch,” he jokes. But the quality of this key supermarket wine is greatly improved for it.
Andy Neather blogs at https://aviewfrommytable.substack.com/
Image credit – Andrey Kovalev
Keywords:
Search
Digital Editions
56-58 Church Walk, Burgess Hill, West Sussex, RH15 9AN
Registered in England No. 6646125. VAT No. 938 4452 95