Domaine Serre Besson

Village:
Vinsobres
Appellation:
4ha
Vinsobres
Growers:
Victor Taylor
Xavier Nyssen
Website:
https://serre-besson.com/
Downloadable PDF

The hilltop village of Vinsobres is situated between the Pré-Alpes and Mont Ventoux in the northeastern corner of the Côtes du Rhône “méridionale”. After having been classified as Côtes du Rhône Villages, Vinsobres was elevated to “Cru” status in 2006, becoming the first in the Drôme department. The majority of Vinsobre’s vineyards were planted as a result of the devasting frost of 1956 which wiped out the village’s olive groves. The slopes were re-planted with vines giving the appellation a high percentage of old vines. The vineyards range from 200 to 500 meters in elevation and Vinsobres’ unique terroir is considered by many to be the finest for Syrah in the southern Rhone.

Victor Taylor is an American wine professional who somehow wound up in the remote town of Nyons in the Drôme department (had to be either a witness protection program or an addiction to olive oil). In 2011, not far from Nyons, he stumbled upon some old vines sloping away from the Vinsobres plateau with a breathtaking view of Mont Ventoux and a “for sale” sign. Let us just say that after 5 years of relentless effort he and his partner, Xavier Nyssen produced their first vintage in 2016.

The 10 hectare domain lies at an altitude of 450 meters in the “lieu dit” called “Les Côtes”. The land is split evenly between vineyards and forest. The Serre Besson vineyard slopes down from the forested mountain crest with Syrah planted at the highest elevation and the other varieties continuing on down the hill. Within the 5 hectares of vineyards, there are 11 parcels, one hectare of which was planted in 1961 with mixed rows of Grenache, Syrah, and Mourvedre. The vineyard’s soils are a mix of clay, limestone and river stones rich in calcite. Victor and Xavier began farming organically in 2016 and obtained certification in 2019.

That same year they built a small winery into the side of the mountain allowing them to use gravity rather than pumps to move their crushed grapes into the fermentation tanks. They harvest by hand and manually sort all of the grape bunches that enter the cellar.

Vinsobres

The Vinsobres blend changes according to the vintage, but is typically 50% Grenache, 35% Syrah, and 15% mixed Cinsault, Mourvedre, and Carignan. Reflecting the different varieties and parcels, four lots of wine are fermented separately. One lot includes the co-planted old vines, where the different varieties are harvested together and give the wine an interesting mix of ripeness and alcohol levels. Being risk averse, Victor and Xavier ferment with indigenous yeast if conditions permit or will use a neutral selected yeast. The grape bunches are de-stemmed before being fed into cement tanks with a certain proportion of the stems layered back into the tank interspersed with the grapes. Blending of the lots is done the following spring. The wine is then matured partially in cement tanks and partially in 400L oak ovals.

Côtes du Rhône Rosé de Maceration

The Serre Besson Rosé is a blend of Grenache, Syrah, Cinsault, and Viognier. The Viognier is picked two weeks before the red varieties and is left to macerate on the skins for two days before pressing and fermentation in stainless steel. The Grenache and Cinsault are pressed directly and the juice is fed into a cement vat for fermentation. The Syrah is de-stemmed before the grapes are fed into a cement vat for a brief maceration. The juice is then drawn from the tank and put into another cement vat for fermentation. After fermentation, the four grapes are blended and aged in barrels for 4-6 months before bottling.

Region: Rhône

The Rhône and Loire rivers, if taken together, bring to a geographic focus nearly the whole of France. The two rivers never meet but they pass relatively near each other while flowing in different directions; the Loire flowing north some seven miles west of St. Etienne and the Rhône flowing south about eighteen miles east of St. Etienne, near the town of Chavanay, one of the northern most villages in the Saint Joseph appellation...

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I like to imagine that long before cities were built and humans walked the earth, these two immense and powerful aqua-highways had a relationship, something akin to a gravitational pull (that’s another way of saying romance). Even though they could not see each other, I imagine they could feel each other’s presence and in the primordial silence, the movement of each river might have given rise to a song which would have echoed between the Massif Central and the Alps.

The Rhône river begins in the Swiss Alps and flows 810 kilometers until it finally washes into the Mediterranean Sea. The vineyard area referred to generally as the Côtes du Rhône extends from Lyon in the north to Avignon in the south. The northern Rhône, known as the “vignoble septentrional,” is linked to the historic importance of Lyon whose commercial and gastronomic vitality have encouraged the northern Rhône vineyards to flourish. The northern vineyards lie on a narrow band of steep granite hills that represent the eastern extreme of the Massif Central. They run along the western edge of the river for a forty mile stretch between Vienne and Valence. The exceptions are the recently replanted vineyards in Vienne and the Hermitage vineyards, all of which lie on the eastern side. The climates of the northern and southern regions are notably different, with the north being cooler and wetter (a gift from the Swiss Alps that comes with the river). This is a major contributing factor to the extraordinary qualities of the northern Rhône reds which are cool climate Syrahs. The southern Rhône is quite separate from the northern region. It fans out around Avignon some hundred kilometers to the south of Valence. The southern Rhone known as the “vignoble méridional,” benefits from a Mediterranean influence which brings warmer and dryer air. It is here that one encounters lavender, olive trees and Grenache. The geology and topology of the southern Rhône are extremely variable with rivers and glaciers leaving certain zones with an abundance of surface stones. It is the Grenache grape that above all offers a thread of continuity to the red wines of the region.

The A.O.C. scheme of the Rhône Valley resembles that of Beaujolais and by French A.O.C. standards, it is rather simply organized, but of course not without its exceptions and contradictions. The appellations between Lyon and Avignon (with the exception of the Diois vineyards along the Drôme river in the Pre-Alps) are collectively known as Cotes du Rhône and include 171 communes spread throughout six départemants. The most basic appellation in the hierarchy covers wines that are labeled as Côtes du Rhône but technically referred to as Côtes du Rhône Régionales. Virtually all of these vineyards are located in the southern four départemants: Drôme, Ardèche, Vaucluse and Gard. Also located in these same four départemants, is the next level in the hierarchy, which is called Côtes du Rhône Villages. It includes 95 communes with a select 18 that are authorized to add their specific village name on the label. At the top of the order are the 13 Crus of Côtes du Rhône which do use their village of origin names on the label but not the word “Cru”. Eight of the “crus” lie in the northern Rhone: Côte-Rôtie, Condrieu, Château Grillet, Saint Joseph, Cornas Saint Péray, Hermitage and Crozes-Hermitage. Five lie in the southern part: Gigondas, Vacqueyras, Châteauneuf-du-Pape, Tavel and Lirac. There are additionally two villages whose red wines figure in the Côtes du Rhône Villages appellation, that have been given a separate A.O.C. for sweet wines known as vin doux natural. These are the villages of Rasteau and Beaumes de Venise. To finish out the Rhône Valley viticole, there are four independent appellations in the southern Rhône: Côtes du Vivarais, Coteaux du Tricastin, Côtes du Ventoux and Côtes du Luberon. All of this is to show that simple is not necessarily synonymous with simplistic.

When I started in the wine business in 1979, the wines of the Rhone Valley, with the exception of Hermitage and Châteauneuf du Pape, were little known or appreciated in the United States. At the time, a tasting of Saint Joseph wines seemed very exotic. This is in stark contrast to the enormous popularity the Rhône Valley’s wines enjoyed today. I don’t imagine that the ancient Romans would be surprised.