Just 6% of Rhône Valley wines are white, but there is huge variety of styles, from straightforward, everyday wines to some of the finest, most distinctive whites in the world.
Though they share some grape varieties, the white wine in the Southern and Northern Rhône are very different. With some destined for the dinner table and others deliciously drinkable by themselves, there are styles to suit all tastes and plenty of value to be found at every level.
We’ll take a close look at the varieties and appellations that make white Rhône an increasingly popular and sought-after category.
Transcript: Top Rhône Whte Wine Producers by AOC
Find below Matt's top white wine produce selection for the Rhône Valley, classed by appellation.
Matt Walls is a freelance wine writer and consultant based in London.
He is a contributing editor at Decanter and writes regular articles for other magazines and websites such as Foodism, Imbibe and timatkin.com.
He won the Best Newcomer awards at the 2013 Fortnum & Mason Food and Drink Awards for Drink Me, his first book on wine, which has sold over 10,000 copies.
He publishes a popular wine blog, www.mattwalls.co.uk, for which he won International Wine & Spirit Competition Blogger of the Year 2015.
When not writing, Walls advises restaurants on wine lists, hosts tastings, judges food and wine competitions and develops wine apps.
Matt is interested in all areas of wine, but specialises in those of the Rhône – he is Regional Chair for the Rhône at the Decanter World Wine Awards.
Almost every wine book in print speaks of the 13 grape varieties of Châteauneuf-du-Pape, but this count is not exactly accurate. If you factor in all of the color variants of those 13 grapes, you end up with 22 authorized grapes for this appellation!
Christophe Tassan is interviewed by Decanter Magazine’s Andrew Jefford about the Rhône Valley and its wines. “I was born in the dining room, in hospitality,” Christophe tells us, which seems appropriate, as this interview took place in a San Francisco restaurant around the corner from The Battery, where he is currently the wine director.
As autumn is drawing to a close and the wine presses have been washed and put away, the first wines tasted before being blended confirm what had been sensed: 2016 is going to be a fabulous vintage! And if some compare it to the magnificent 2010, some others do not hesitate to go as far as the famous star-vintage 1990… Either way, the evidence that we are witnessing the making of a great vintage is clear.