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2022 Côtes du Rhône Rouge
Selected by Kermit Lynch

This southern French rouge amazes year in and year out

Forty-year-old vines

One of our best values year in and year out, our house Côtes du Rhône is an unfiltered Grenache-based red we blend each year together with a cave co-op outside of Avignon. The winemaker works closely with numerous small vignerons and purchases their grapes, sourcing from a variety of nearby terroirs to give a quintessential rendition of a southern Rhône red. Much of the fruit comes from the neighboring town of Châteauneuf-de-Gadagne—one of the twenty communes permitted to append its name to the Côtes du Rhône Villages appellation—whose stony, alluvial soils are similar to those of a much better-known Châteauneuf not far away.
Our annual blending consists of tasting samples from roughly two dozen different tanks, with the goal of capturing classic Rhône flavors in a versatile and approachable bargain red. In the 2022 rendition, you’ll find rich, juicy aromas of ripe dark fruit, spicy flavors of licorice and wild herbs, and chewy tannins that leave your palate replete with impressions of thyme, black cherry, and stone.
We are always impressed by how delicious this wine is when we taste it at the cave each year; we hope you’ll feel the same upon uncorking a bottle at home.
—Anthony Lynch
Wine Type: | red |
Vintage: | 2022 |
Bottle Size: | 750mL |
Blend: | 46% Syrah, 35% Grenache, 9% Mourvèdre, 5% Carignan, 3% Marselan, 2% Cinsault |
Appellation: | Côtes du Rhône |
Country: | France |
Region: | Southern Rhône |
Producer: | Selected by Kermit Lynch |
Vineyard: | 40 years average, 36 ha |
Soil: | Alluvial with galets roulés (rounded riverbed stones) |
Aging: | Wine is aged in cement tank before bottling |
Farming: | Lutte Raisonnée |
Alcohol: | 14.5% |
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About The Producer
Selected by Kermit Lynch
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Where the newsletter started

Where the newsletter started
Every three or four months I would send my clients a cheaply made list of my inventory, but it began to dawn on me that business did not pick up afterwards. It occurred to me that my clientele might not know what Château Grillet is, either. One month in 1974 I had an especially esoteric collection of wines arriving, so I decided to put a short explanation about each wine into my price list, to try and let my clients know what to expect when they uncorked a bottle. The day after I mailed that brochure, people showed up at the shop, and that is how these little propaganda pieces for fine wine were born.—Kermit Lynch