Condrieu, Domaine Graeme & Julie Bott 2023
Jeb Dunnuck 94 (2024); Wine Spectator 93 (2025); Decanter 93 (2024)
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Why this wine
Condrieu is a tiny appellation and most of it is made in a rich, heady register. The Botts go the other way: whole-bunch pressed, fermented cool in old barrels, aged on the lees without stirring, and picked off granite plots at 250 to 300 metres. The result is Viognier with tension, which is rarer than Viognier with weight.
At a glance
- Grape
- Viognier
- Region
- Rhône Valley, France
- Alcohol
- 12.50%
- Body
- Medium
- Acidity
- High
- Sweetness
- Dry
- Drink
- Medium (5-10 yrs)
- Pairs with
- Seafood, Poultry & Pork, Spicy Dishes
How it tastes
Vivid aromas of white peach, honeysuckle and apricot, with a touch of white grapefruit behind them. This is the taut, energetic end of Condrieu rather than the opulent one: medium in weight, dry, with high acidity and a real sense of tension carrying a very pure finish. Viognier 100%.
The producer
Domaine Graeme & Julie Bott is one of the northern Rhône's newer names, and one of its most promising. Graeme is from New Zealand and Julie a native of the northern Rhône; they met working at Domaine Ogier in Côte-Rôtie, then found that the garden of their first house sat on the Condrieu hillside of Vérin, and built a ten-hectare domaine from there across Côte-Rôtie, Condrieu, Saint-Joseph and the little-known Seyssuel, working now from their own cellar beneath La Mouline. This wine blends several plots: the lieux-dits of Côte-Chatillon and La Caille, Les Agnettes, Rochebret and Jean Raude at Vérin, and Le Biez and Grand Val at Saint-Pierre de Bœuf, all on steep granite at 250–300 metres where the day-to-night swing keeps natural freshness. The vines are twenty-five years old, planted at 10,000 per hectare, trained by the traditional échalas stake method and hand-harvested parcel by parcel. The fruit was whole-bunch pressed for a pure, aromatic juice, cold-settled and racked clear, then fermented at 15–16°C in old 400- and 500-litre French oak barrels with neutral selected yeasts, and aged nine months on its lees without bâtonnage to keep the style clean and mineral. The 2023 season was warm with a fine late autumn, and September conditions let picking run to early October with the fruit in impeccable condition.
Food and drinking
Serve at 10–12°C. Good with scallops, crab, roast pork with apricot, or a mildly spiced Thai curry. Drink now and over the next five to ten years; no decanting needed. Sealed with a DIAM technical cork. Suitable for vegetarians and vegans.