The most interesting wine I drank during a family vacation in France last week was not the riveting grand cru Chablis I tasted while visiting a producer’s cellar, or the invigorating Sancerre I enjoyed in a restaurant, or even the sumptuous grower’s Champagne we lifted in toast on our last evening there. Instead, it was an inexpensive (seven and-a-half euros, so about eleven dollars) St.-Joseph that I bought at the local Intermarché supermarket.
Though not as illustrious as some of its neighbors, St.-Joseph is a fairly well-regarded appellation in the northern Rhône Valley. It lies south of Côte-Rôtie, east from both Crozes-Hermitage and Hermitage, and north of Cornas. Like the wines from those other appellations, its reds all are made with Syrah grapes. And while often lighter in body and somewhat riper-tasting than wines from those others, St.-Josephs nonetheless can display the tangy, pepper-filled, smoky, even meaty quality that distinguishes the finest northern Rhône reds.
This distinctive character, which is evident in both the wines’ aromas and their flavors, renders these French reds different from wines made with Syrah (or Shiraz) most anywhere else in the world. In turn, the wines are quite exceptional. The vast majority of red wines made in the world today taste primarily of fruit, with other notes playing a supporting part. In the northern Rhône, those roles often are reversed. With these wines, fresh fruit scents and flavors frequently play second fiddle to more notably earthy ones.
So it was with this St.-Joseph. It came from a cooperative, the name of which I didn’t think to write down, and it tasted unmistakably of its region. I can’t say that it was undoubtedly St.-Joseph (as opposed to, say, Crozes-Hermitage), but it could not have come from anyplace other than the northern Rhône. In short, it tasted nothing if not authentic.
This sort of stylistic authenticity is not the same as “terroir,” a term often misused these days. “Terroir” denotes specificity, a specificity literally rooted in a particular place. To be meaningful, it cannot apply to an entire region, or at least to one with nearly 950 hectares under vines (as in St.-Jospeph). By contrast, the sort of authenticity so evident in this particular wine comes in part from place, but also in part from winemaking vision. It’s a matter of style, and style results from human choice as much as from nature.
Now, in every other respect, this St.-Joseph was unremarkable. Fairly thin in body, with only adequate length on the palate, and not much overt fruit flavor, it was a fine eleven dollar wine, but not more. Were I to rate it for Wine Review Online, I would give it something between 85 and 88 points–a good score, surely, but not an exceptional one.
What I found so interesting about this wine, though, was that its strengths and weaknesses were almost exactly the reverse of virtually all of the many wines that I have given comparable scores to on this website over the years. Almost all of these have been filled with sometimes vivacious fruit flavors, but have lacked subtlety or nuance. Many of them have hailed from South Australia, California, and other New World grape-growing regions, but a fair amount also have come from Europe.
Regardless of geographical origin or of the grape(s) used to make them, these fruit-forward red wines define what has come to called wine’s “international style.” And at least in my experience living in the United States, they dominate today’s wine market. My supermarket St-Joseph was anything but international. I’ve tasted many better wines, meaning more complete so compelling ones, but few that manage to display the sort of stylistic authenticity that this fairly humble red did. That’s why, while not the inherently best wine I drank last week, it was definitely the most interesting.
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