In this country, Rhône variety white wines–Viognier, Roussanne, and Marsanne mainly–have been a puzzle. In the late 80s and 
early 90s they shot out of the gate with the velocity of a greyhound, grabbing the public imagination and more or less defining what came to be known as the ‘Anything but Chardonnay’ movement. And what alternatives! What could be more different than Viognier with its heady exotic scents and richness, or Roussanne and Marsanne with their broad, elusive power?
But the ABC movement had a few unintended consequences. The first is that many other white wine varieties bolted through the ABC door along with Rhône variety whites, notably Pinot Grigio, and eventually Gruner Veltliner and Albariño–all clean and racy wines in marked contrast to Rhône whites (Viognier wines in particular went through a wretched phase of lurid ripenesses and excessive oak treatment). Meanwhile, Chardonnays actually got better, as producers reined in the oak, harvested at less than stratospheric sugar levels, and adjusted their malolactic fermentations so that the wines no longer tasted like buttercream frosting.
Now that the ABC frenzy has died down to an extent, the Rhône trend-chasers have peeled away and the great practitioners have remained true to the cause for all three varieties (as well as the up-and-comer Grenache Blanc) but the single white Rhône variety that has winemakers losing sleep, the one that lures them with its promise and its complexity, just as surely as Ulysses was lured to the rocks by the Sirens, is Roussanne.
This amounts to an evolution over the past 15 to 20 years. It’s easy to see how winemakers found themselves seduced by the easy charms and seductive scents of a wine like Viognier, which in California is quite demonstrative, not to say pushy in its outward charms.
But Roussanne isn’t nearly so forward. It doesn’t have the easy, obvious allure of Viognier. Its appeal is much more sophisticated, ambiguous, elusive, harder to read. It’s as if the vine is designed to give winemakers a lifetime of mystery. Compared with Viognier, Roussanne has what you might call a built-in ambiguity of flavor, which some speak of as neutral, some as profound. Surely a wine like Chateau de Beaucastel Vieilles Vignes–arguably the greatest Roussanne bottling on earth–has little trouble making the latter claim. For this reason, I think, wineries plant it, and winemakers make it, hoping that consumers will chase the grail like themselves.
I was lucky enough to attend a recent conference at Tablas Creek Winery in Paso Robles, which gathered an A-list of producers to compare notes about this wonderful, confounding variety. Tablas Creek, which has been instrumental in propagating and distributing some of the finest Roussanne cuttings in California from its partner winery, Chateau de Beaucastel, was the ideal host, not least because they could convince Pierre Perrin from Beaucastel to give a paper at the proceedings; he poured several vintages of Vieilles Vignes as well. Joining him were his partners, Robert and Jason Haas of Tablas Creek, as well as John Alban of Alban Vineyards, Bob Lindquist of Qupe, Sashi Moorman of Stolpman Vineyards, Doug McCrea of McCrea Cellars, Bill Easton of Terre Rouge, and a dozen others.
Currently there are less than 200 acres of Roussanne planted in the country, and while that represents a fourfold increase in the last ten years, there is not a huge upturn toward Roussanne so far among producers or in the marketplace.
For Bob Lindquist, who makes a fine Roussanne from Bien Nacido Vineyard, it is by far his most expensive wine to produce, and the most problematic in the winery. The vineyard guys at the conference referred to Roussanne as ‘the princess,’ requiring kid gloves in the nursery and gentle handling in the vineyard. It is sensitive to wind, to drought, to mildew and rot. It usually requires multiple passes in the vineyard come harvest, where it’s common to have half a cluster golden ripe and the other half, the one shaded from afternoon sun, hard and crunchy. (Sashi Moorman of Stolpman told of an experimental program whereby he essentially paper-clipped the unripe side of the cluster to face the sun.) Certain vines will yellow and start to decline before the end of the season; the next year that vine will rebound, and another vine will show decline.
All said, in France, in Washington, and in California, Roussanne is a fickle princess. Its difficulties have scared away the pretenders and the dilettantes, leaving mostly serious practitioners to wrestle with it–most of whom were at Tablas Creek on that day.
And the variety would survive with nothing less, said John Alban in a presentation on Roussanne in the marketplace. Roussanne’s variability is hardly a selling point to a broad consumer base. It tends to be a rollercoaster, he said, depending on where it’s grown and where it is in its life cycle. And, he added, it’s a polarizing wine. It is not uncommon for different people to proclaim mad love or vigorous dislike when simultaneously tasting the same wine. That is why, said Alban, the Roussanne brought to market must be nothing less than brilliant. ‘In a crowded marketplace,’ he said, ‘unusual varieties can’t just get by with being unusual. They need to be great.’
No small challenge, that. So why do these producers put up with such a demanding variety? Because when it’s good, it’s like Ulysses and the Sirens: the wine is completely irresistible. In fact I’d venture to say that Roussanne and the blends that employ it routinely produce some of the most complex white wines in America today, bar none.
I’d love to be able to describe that complexity, I’d love to be able to locate the variety’s flavor profile for you, but I’m not sure I can pin it down. For me, a well-made Roussanne is practically ineffable; where most of the ABC wines have the dimensionality of a cartoon, American Roussanne is more like a Rothko painting.
I evoke Rothko partly because its complexities have an almost abstract feel, the way the flavors and textures work together seems slippery; its remarkable acidity (the Dark Side of the Cluster?) supports a remarkable palate weight. The wines seem heavy and light at once, sweet and dry, racy and remarkably still. Perceived oxidative qualities seem to come and go in the glass. Fruit flits in the range of apricot and peach to dried pear, but to me it’s difficult to separate Roussanne’s fruit character from the other savory and textural elements, to the elements of lees and honey and beeswax and lanolin and cut straw and saffron, to the rich feel of it in the mouth, to the fact that it changes moment by moment in the glass, and year by year in the bottle–all wines are subject to the rigors of time and age, but few whites change as dramatically as Roussanne.
It is not an easy wine to grasp, which I suppose makes it difficult to love. But that’s perhaps part of the reason I love it. And as the nights grow longer and cooler, and the dishes on your table are a little richer and more homey, give a bottle of Roussanne some time and attention; it’s likely to offer many indescribable rewards.