Saint-Joseph, La Croix des Vignes, Paul Jaboulet Aîné 2021
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Why this wine
Saint-Joseph is the northern Rhône's most approachable granite Syrah, and La Croix des Vignes comes off one terraced eight-hectare plot rather than a blend across the appellation. Jaboulet have farmed it organically since 2016, sorting the fruit plot by plot before a three-week maceration. It carries the polish of the bigger northern names for a good deal less.
At a glance
- Grape
- Syrah
- Region
- Rhône Valley, France
- Alcohol
- 13.00%
- Body
- Full
- Acidity
- Medium
- Tannins
- Medium
- Sweetness
- Dry
- Drink
- Medium (5-10 yrs)
- Pairs with
- Red Meat, Poultry & Pork, Cheese
How it tastes
Black fruit leads, with delicate spice and toast behind it from a year in oak. The palate is smooth and generous and full in weight, the tannins rounded, the finish carried by well-integrated notes of ageing. Syrah 100%.
The producer
Domaines Paul Jaboulet Aîné was founded in 1834 and farms the northern Rhône's iconic terroirs across seven appellations; the Frey family bought it in 2006, and Caroline Frey has made the wines since, keeping a nine-hectare wildlife reserve and working the land regeneratively. The vines sit on the 45th parallel at 250 metres, on terraces cut into a slope averaging a 45% gradient — an eight-hectare plot planted in 1998 on granite degraded to 'gore', with bedrock breaking the surface in places, gobelet-trained on stakes with a south to south-westerly exposure and yielding 25 to 35 hectolitres per hectare; the whole vineyard is certified organic. The fruit was picked by hand, sorted by plot and brought in in 12kg crates, then fully destemmed and macerated for three weeks with daily pump-overs, put through malolactic conversion and aged twelve months in concrete eggs and French oak barrels, 15% of them new.
Food and drinking
Serve at 16 to 18°C. It goes with roast lamb, peppered steak, sausages with lentils and a mature hard cheese. Drinking well now and over the next five to eight years; an hour in a decanter helps it open out. Suitable for vegetarians and vegans.