When bigger is better
Family-owned wine business Guigal in France’s Rhône Valley shows that quality and quantity can go hand in hand, as Joelle Thomson explains...
Four million bottles is a lot of wine – especially when you consider that those are made by a company that employs fewer than 20 full-time staff each year, sources grapes from at least 850 growers, and ages most of its wine for at least three years.
The wine that has prompted this column is one of the most consistent, high-quality reds made with grapes grown in France’s Southern Rhone Valley. It is Guigal Côtes du Rhône Rouge.
This smooth, complex red is aged for three years prior to release, which means there are 12 million bottles of this wine at the winery at any one time: fermenting, maturing and being made ready for labelling, marketing, and shipping around the world.
“It’s a logistical nightmare, but the work ethic I’ve seen at Guigal is second to none and all with less than 20 full- time staff headed up by family members, Marcel, Philippe and Jacques,” said Guigal brand ambassador, Brett Crittenden, on a visit to New Zealand in early October.
“This smooth, complex red is aged for three years prior to release, which means there are 12 million bottles of this wine at the winery at any one time...”
Crittenden is an effusive brand ambassador and clearly a crucial part
of the business, with Guigal one of the eight most-recognised wine brands in the world. Its Guigal Côtes du Rhône Rouge has improved so much and so consistently over the past 15 years, it is sometimes tempting to imagine that this wine virtually sells itself. How this has happened is easy to quantify (see reviews below), but ‘why’ is perhaps the more interesting question.
The poster child for any winery is its most affordable wine, and if it has a surprise factor it is the best advertising money can buy because it creates a culture of trust in the brand. And given the quality of the higher tier wines in the Guigal stable, this trust is well-placed.
The Guigal name is, along with Chapoutier, Chave and Clape, one of the most famous in the Northern Rhône. In this case, the company is both a negociant (negotiating deals with grape growers –
at least 850 of them) and a winemaker based in Côtes Rôtie: one of the world’s benchmark wine regions and one of the tiniest.
Although Guigal is best known for its high-quality benchmark Côtes du Rhône Rouge and its staggeringly concentrated single vineyard Côtes Rôtie wines, it also produces stellar examples of Châteauneuf- du-Pape, Hermitage, Gigondas and Condrieu. In 2017, the Guigal family purchased Château de Nalys and in 2022, they purchased Chateau d’Aqueria, a large estate in the southern RhÔne with 66 hectares of vines planted in the appellations of Tavel, Lirac and the Côtes du Rhône.
“I’ve never seen anything like Guigal in the wine business in over 50 years of working in wine, in terms of passion, dedication and a constant quest for improvement,” says Crittenden.
Lest this all sound like an unrestrained rave about a large French wine company, the quality, potential ageing ability and delicious drinkability of the Guigal wines all show that it is possible to make a range of products in high volume that highlight great quality.
My top picks of the current Guigal range:
2019 Guigal Côtes du Rhône Rouge
RRP $28.99
Impressive southern French red blend with the dark fruit, soft mouthfeel and complex aromas of 55% Syrah with Grenache and Mourvèdre adding depth, plumpness and richness of flavour. This wine is made with grapes grown by 850 growers, but the wine is produced entirely by the Guigal family. Improvements in quality over the past couple of decades include increasing the proportion of Syrah in the blend (adding weight and robust flavours), adding Mourvèdre to the wine (for complexity), and longer ageing, which softens and smooths it.
2020 Guigal Crozes Hermitage Rouge
RRP $53.99
Wines from Crozes Hermitage have improved immeasurably in quality as the region has morphed away from being mostly an area of co-op wineries, which did make up 80% of production. The region is now mostly made up of winemakers who grow their own grapes – or at least source and have control over where they come from. This change translates in the ripe depths of Syrah coming through in this complex and beautiful wine.
D: Guigal is distributed by Negociants.
Joelle Thomson is a journalist, wine writer and author.
