It's been a few years since we last visited Alain Steinmaier's remote estate in the hills outside St-Gervais. So long, in fact, that I had forgotten how the road winds, so much so that you wonder if you will ever arrive in the tiny hamlet of Les Cellettes at Domaine Ste-Anne, one of the Rhône Valley's most highly regarded wineries.. Obviously you will and, once there, everything comes back, in particular the immaculate underground cellar with its beautiful vaulted ceilings. It's warmer here than outside where the Mistral is blowing hard.
Alain is a man who smiles a lot. He has reason to: his father Guy bought the estate many years ago and he, then Alain, developed a range of wines based on a love of Burgundian finesse and purity. We have been visiting Domaine Ste-Anne for more than twenty years and little has changed. In fact, the range of seven wines remains the same and not even the labels have been altered except to take account of the new vintages and, occasionally, a slight change in ABVs. Simplicity in its most beautiful sense is the name of the game.
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So, seven wines. Not many by today's standards - so many estates offer twice that number or more. Just two of them are white: a Côtes du Rhône made from the region's three most important white varieties - Roussanne, Marsanne and Viognier - and a Vin de France which is 100% Viognier. The former - from 2024 (14.5%), an excellent year for white wines here - is a fruit bomb with all three varieties vying for top spot but, in fact, blending harmoniously together. The Roussanne may slightly dominate but they're all in there, on the nose and following through to the palate. It's not often I enjoy a white wine this much. |
The Viognier, also from 2024 (15%), is something quite different. Anyone who is looking for a Condrieu lookalike with all its fat, look away. There are many Condrieu imitators in the region, almost all failing quite miserably, but the Steinmaier way is to do something quite different to the others. From 40-year-old vines, this is a Viognier in a class of its own with minerality and elegance at its core but not without Viognier character and charm. It's a world class bottle with a - theoretically - humble pedigree.
The first two reds are good, typical Grenache-based bottling with sweet red fruit character but, when you get to the old-vine 'Notre Dame des Cellettes', you know you are in another place or, rather, you are here, high in hills of the northern Gard département. This is predominantly Grenache too but with a Burgundian purity that makes it difficult to resist. From the excellent 2022 vintage (14%), it's young but approachable, juicy and distinctive. It went very well with a roast chicken.
Then on to 'Les Rouvieres', 70% of which is Mourvèdre, the rest Syrah and Grenache in equal parts. This needs time for the grape to express itself. Show me a Mourvèdre that's ready in less than seven years (actually there is one I know of: Château Juvenal's 'M de Juvenal' which will be making an appearance in a blog post soon) and I will be knocking doors down to get to it. Anyway, the 2022 vintage (14%) is going to be a lovely, elegant wine with another two or three years under its belt. The Mourvèdre is well tempered by the other grapes so the wine is soft and approachable but with clear potential to be more exciting with time. Quite a lot of garrigue character.
Finally, 'Les Mourillons' is described as "mostly Syrah", about 90% is what they tell me, and is the only wine aged in oak barrels, not that this is very apparent in the flavour profile, at least, except perhaps for a touch of vanilla and cloves. Again from 2022 (14%), a vintage that seems to have been exceptionally good to Ste-Anne, it has great Syrah style - lots of cassis - but with rounder tannins than, say, a Crozes-Hermitage which is, price-wise, the only northern Rhône wine that comes near to it (except for some of the more rustic wines, which this certainly isn't). Again, more bottle age would be good but I find it quite irresistible already.
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