The vineyards are a little south of Côte Rôtie, on the west bank of the Rhône. The vine is the Vionnier. The wine, fuller than Vouvray, with more alcohol and body, has a strange, wild, flowery bouquet and a flavor like no other wine I have ever tasted, except, for the best of reasons, Château Grillet.
Château Grillet
This is a Condrieu (and the best of Condrieus) in all save name. It is made from the same grape, the Vionnier, grown on steep-terraced hillsides in the heart of the Condrieu district. Unlike the other Rhone vineyards, however, Chateau Grillet is a single property; the owner, Monsieur Gachet, makes his wine with great care—it would stand a trip to Alaska or darkest Africa—and though it sometimes throws sediment in bottle, as any respectable Rhone wine should, it ranks definitely as a a vin de garde, one you can keep. Hard to find, but eminently worth drinking when you can find it, Chateau Grillet is one of the rarest wines of France—a big, dry, brassy, golden wine, with a flavor which is like a resounding, amplified echo of Condrieu itself.
Hermitage
Twenty-odd miles downstream from Cote Rotie, if you are traveling south-ward on R.N. 7, the valley narrows rather abruptly, and a precipitous, rocky hillside, rising almost sheer from the river's edge, seems to bar all further progress toward the south. The broad, swift Rhone narrows, curves west, and the road and railway line crawl precariously around the hill's steep shoulder. Then suddenly road and river and railway swing east again; you are in the streets of a village, with a great sundrenched slope of vines on your left and miles of fertile farmland at your feet.
The hill of Hermitage is one of the most impressive vineyards of France. From the village of Tain at its foot, the vines of the lower slope sweep up to the walled terrace above like the glacis of some enormous fortress, with rampart after high rampart defending its summit. Two thousand yards long, five hundred yards wide, seven hundred feet above river and town at its highest point, Hermitage consists of some 250 man-made acres, chiseled for over a thousand years out of thin soul and rock.
On the crest of the hill, dominating the Rhone, there is a little white chapel. According to tradition it was here, in the days of the good Saint Louis, King of France, that a returning Crusader, weary of the world, built himself a hermitage and planted the first vines. His name, which we can afford to remember with gratitude, was Gaspard de Sterimberg, and whether or not he brought the Syrah grape with him, as is said, it is at least probable that his hermitage gave the vineyard and the wine their name.
Like Cote Rotie, the Hermitage vine-yard is divided into quartiers and although these appear but rarely on wine labels, they are certainly worth listing:
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