Château Grillet: Understanding the Myth
November 1, 2024
Nikita Malhotra
My journey with Château-Grillet is a bit strange, it starts with Maison des Joncs, a Burgundy project from Jae Chu, the current winemaker at Château-Grillet. She only made Maison des Joncs for two vintages, 2017 and 2018, before she took on her current role at the historic and esteemed Château-Grillet. The wine was presented to me as a blind, a charming and rustic red wine, simple but with a simplicity that implies craftsmanship and care. This was her Savigny-les-Beaune Les Vergelesses 1er Cru - and the person who blinded me, happy to have stumped me, continued his victory lap by telling me about how rare it is to find these wines now that Jae Chu had relocated to the Rhône. I tried to imagine what she could do with Syrah or Grenache, thought about how balanced and fresh and delightful the wines would be - and then my friend presented me with the kicker, Jae Chu was the winemaker for Château-Grillet, one of the great wine estates, a monopole we all learn about in our wine education. With all that history and the distinctions, all I could concentrate on was that the woman who made the glass of red Burgundy in front of me, which I was ready to wax poetic as being the next voice of the region, was now making wine with Viognier.
Jae Chu
Viognier is often a maligned grape- not many sommeliers go out of their way to endorse it - and in a world where we are chasing acid and freshness, a grape described as floral and rich and intense often doesn’t get the spotlight. But, and there will always be a but, with Château-Grillet, the balance between richness and weight and acidity defines this wine. Château-Grillet is located entirely within the already small appellation of Condrieu, and is one of the few single-estate appellations in all of France. The ancient Romans first cultivated the vineyards, and you can still find evidence of that amongst the ruins scattered around the vineyards. The first plots of vines at Château-Grillet are said to have been planted by Emperor Probus in the third century, with plants brought from Dalmatia. The name is a reference to the roasted hillside; the site forms a south-facing natural amphitheatre, which is protected from the La Bise north wind.
Thomas Jefferson visited Château-Grillet during his time in France, proof that the wines were quite notable during the 18th century. It passed into the hands of the Neyret-Gachet family in 1823 and became the first estate in the Rhône Valley to produce, bottle and sell their own wines, starting in 1830. In the 1930’s France’s Appellations d’Origine Contrôlée were being recognized and categorized and Lyonnais gastronome Curnonsky had distinguished five white wines as the best in the world. Château-Grillet was featured on the list alongside Le Montrachet, La Coulée de Serrant, Château Chalon and Château d’Yquem. It has a single owner, François Pinault, owner of Château Latour in Pauillac and Domaine d’Eugénie in Vosne-Romanée, after buying it in 2011 from the Neyret-Gachet family, who owned it for almost two centuries.
André Canet took over in 1961, and bought out the rest of the family between 1965 and 1970. His daughter Isabelle Baratin-Canet took over after his death in 1994, and she was the last of the Neyret-Gachet descendants to have ownership, as it was then sold to François Pinault.
