Alain Graillot Crozes-Hermitage 2023

Profile & Story

Alain Graillot began making wine in 1985 after leaving a career as marketing manager for a large French agricultural equipment company, benefiting from the early advice of friends including Paul Jaboulet, Jean-Louis Grippat, and Jacques Seysses of Domaine Dujac in Burgundy. His Crozes-Hermitage vineyards sit on flat, well-draining alluvial soil of sand, gravel, and stones between the Isère and Rhône rivers, near Pont-de-l'Isère, with the best parcels at Les Chassis and Les Sept Chemins. The vines average 30 years old and are 100% Syrah. Hand-harvested and destemmed, the grapes go into lined concrete vats for a two-to-five day cool pre-fermentation maceration before temperatures rise for a 15-to-21-day cuvaison; the young wine is then aged one year, 80% in one-to-three-year-old oak barrels and the remainder in vat, with light filtration and no fining before bottling.