What's Pressoir Drinking - Unicorns or Lunch Wines...?

by Raj Vaidya
April 27, 2022

On Easter weekend in the Rhône Valley, I had the pleasure of lunching on a simple casse-croûte with a friendly vigneron who invited us to taste some local products with him. The spread included several patés: chicken liver, pork and truffle, foie gras and chestnuts, all locally produced, as well as some phenomenal spiced saucisson sec and some crusty, delicious local hearth bread. Of course a giant wood block entirely covered in local cheeses was naturally also on the table…

The kind winemaker opened a number of delicious bottles as we passed the lazy weekend afternoon; an excellent 2013 Blanc de Blancs from Pascal Agrapart, a crisp white from the Jura made of Savignin, and finally, a fairly weathered bottle from Saint-Joseph from the famed producer Raymond Trollat.

Trolllat is an infamous character, jolly and utterly unconcerned with pomp and circumstance. I’ve never had the luck of meeting him, but have heard amazing tales of corks pulled and parties had. His wines have always been charming to me, but in recent years the wines have been fetching very high prices in the auction and rare wine marketplaces, often exceeding a thousand dollars a bottle. Certainly they are quire rare, as Trollat ceased producing after the 2005 vintage upon retiring. But purely judging on the quality of the wines, I struggle with accepting the prices of these. So this occasion to taste an aged bottle in good condition was a treat, especially as it was sourced directly from the Trollat estate.

The wine was delicious, not the most complex example of Syrah by any means but still had lots of character and intensity on the palate. Dried black olives, rosemary and bell pepper spice, lot’s of gamey notes. Not a ton of fruit but a hint of sweetness that may well have come from chaptalization. Medium length on the palate, but certainly not short on intensity in the length. Yet this had the distinct feeling of what I like to call a ‘country wine’ or vin de pays in French, which is to say it was charming and not simple, yet not overtly complex or serious.

In the wine trade bottles like these are often referred to as ‘unicorn wines’, to invoke how rare they are. But from my perspective, this was more of a lunch wine, and it served its purpose marvelously.