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Wine region · France

Northern Rhône

A narrow strip of steep granite slopes where Syrah produces its most peppery, savoury and structured expression.

continentalmoderate

About Northern Rhône

Syrah is the only red grape permitted here, and Northern Rhône Syrah is the reference point for the variety: black pepper, olive, cured meat, violet and firm tannin, at moderate rather than high alcohol.

Côte-Rôtie and Hermitage are the two great appellations; Cornas is the most uncompromisingly structured; Crozes-Hermitage and Saint-Joseph offer the same idea more affordably.

The white grape Viognier makes Condrieu — intensely apricot-and-honeysuckle-scented, full-bodied and dry. In Côte-Rôtie a small proportion of Viognier may be co-fermented with Syrah, which lifts the aromatics and stabilises colour.

The black-pepper note in cool-climate Syrah is attributable to the compound rotundone, one of the few grape aromas with a well-identified single molecular cause.

Northern Rhône is a wine region, not an appellation

No authority delimits this name or attaches rules to it. A country’s major wine division, usually containing appellations or sub-regions beneath it. That does not make it less real or less useful — it means nothing legal follows from it, and you will not generally find it on a label as a controlled designation.

Grapes

Wines from here

red

Northern Rhône Syrah

Cool-climate Syrah at its most savoury: black pepper, olive and cured meat over dark fruit, with firm structure at moderate alcohol.

white

Condrieu

The benchmark Viognier: full-bodied, dry and extravagantly scented of apricot and honeysuckle.

Climate

Continental, with the Mistral wind funnelling down the valley — drying the fruit, reducing disease and stressing the vines.

These are influences on how a wine turns out, not determinants of it. Picking date, yield, vine age and every winemaking decision sit between the climate and the glass.

Soil and geology

Granite and schist on slopes so steep that terracing and hand-working are unavoidable.

WineHQ describes soil in terms of what it demonstrably does — drainage, heat retention, water supply, rooting depth — and not in terms of flavours it is said to transmit. Vines take up ions, not aromas, and no mechanism has been demonstrated by which a mineral in the ground is tasted in the glass. See soil and drainage.

Places within it

  • Condrieu — The spiritual home of Viognier, and the appellation that saved the variety from disappearing altogether.
  • Cornas — A small suntrap of an appellation making the darkest, most uncompromising Syrah in the Rhône — red wine only, no white, no blending.
  • Côte-Rôtie — The northernmost Rhône appellation, on terraces so steep they must be worked by hand, making the most perfumed Syrah in France.
  • Crozes-Hermitage — The Northern Rhône’s largest appellation, surrounding the Hermitage hill, and the affordable way into the region’s Syrah.
  • Hermitage — A single south-facing granite hill above Tain, and for two centuries the most expensive red wine in France after the Bordeaux first growths.
  • Saint-Joseph — A fifty-kilometre ribbon of vineyard down the right bank, ranging from serious hillside Syrah to very ordinary flatland wine.
  • Saint-Péray — The Northern Rhône’s only sparkling wine appellation, and a small source of increasingly serious still Marsanne.

Compared with

What to eat, and how to serve it

Derived from this region’s signature styles. Each is listed separately, because a region does not have one serving temperature.

Northern Rhône Syrah

Serve at 16–18°C (cool room temperature).

Try with steak au poivre, steak or venison and game.

Condrieu

Serve at 10–12°C (lightly chilled).

Try with fillet steak, asparagus or trout.

Location

Approximate centroid: 45.07°, 4.83°. WineHQ stores coordinates only where it has them, and does not estimate boundaries it has not sourced.

Sources

Sources consulted