hello everybody my name is Jimmy Smith and welcome to the wine with Jimmy youtube channel thank you so much for clicking on this video this is a WSET level 3 video on the southern Rhone so this is part 1 of 2 on the southern Rhone this part is available free on YouTube and then part 2 is available only to our members of the Wine With Jimmy channel, the winewithjimmy.com portal that we have with excellent access to even more exclusive videos and then lots and lots of revision tools for your WSET level 3 examination. So if you do have any comments or questions at all please do get in touch via any of the social media on the bottom of each screen or pop a comment. in the comment section below this video and I will endeavor to get back to you.
So we're looking at the Southern Rhone. The Southern Rhone is second only to Bordeaux in terms of total production of quality wine in France. There's nearly around 80,000 hectares of vines in this region so it makes it a significant player in both volume and also in quality. There are some very fine wines found in this area.
On this section, part one, we'll be looking at the climate and the grape growing and we'll start to go into Grenache. In part two, we'll be looking at the other grape varieties and then looking around the key appellations within the Southern Rhone. Okay, so let's get rocking and rolling. So here is a map of France and you'll see that we have identified in the southern section there the southern Rhône. The Rhône starts its life off in the in the Alps so in Lake Geneva zone and then it winds its way down south through the northern Rhône so to the south of Lyon which is just let me get my arrow up here so just this area here so the northern Rhône through here and then it heads towards Avignon past the city of Orange and then finally empties in the Mediterranean near the provincial capital of Marseille.
So we are looking at this expanse here around the old capital, so the old famous city of Avignon, made very famous by the number of the popes who were seated here. And this is why the sort of influence of the pope is very important in wine. The popes would drink the local wines here. It quickly got coined Van de Pap.
And then eventually one of the popes built a summer residence here and that got called the New Castle of the Pope. And that was Chateauneuf-du-Pape, which, of course, we will talk about later on, on part two. It is also where the AOC system was started.
So the Appellation Origine Contrôlée system, which is the equality system in France, it began in Chateauneuf-du-Pape. So in terms of really sort of carving out quality and protecting against fraud, this area is mightily important. So it is in the southern part of France.
It is very close to the Mediterranean. So in terms of its climate, we would classify it as a Mediterranean. We would say this is kind of somewhere around moderate to warm Mediterranean. So very important, of course. And you'll find there are mild winters here.
and nice long warm summers so it's beautifully dry normally in the summer months can be an issue we'll talk about that in a little while there we go so we do have problems of of drought in these areas the grape varieties that we find here will need to be varieties that are very capable of really surviving in these dry conditions so capable in these drought you conditions so garnacha or grenache as we know is one of those very important as well others do struggle a little bit so things like tira but they are found here so in the very dry years they may struggle quite a lot but grenache is the principal great variety and there also is a very forceful wind that comes down from the north it originally is funneled from the gulf stream and then is drawn and brought south to the Mediterranean. by the warm air of the Mediterranean and this is what we call the Mistral. It kind of comes through Burgundy but not very powerfully but then it starts to get channeled down the Rhone Valley and starts to pick up momentum around the northern Rhone area and then it empties out onto the expanse of the southern Rhone. So the Mistral can be a very intensive weather pattern, very windy.
There's a lot of folklore around it. They say that the Mistral blows in three, so three days, six days, nine days, and so on. And also the actual wind speed is often over 70 kilometers an hour. So they are very powerful. I've given you a picture there, actually, of a, I believe it is a Sanso vine in Rastau.
It is an AOC you don't need to know, but you'll see how that vine, which is quite a tall vine, has been heavily affected. by the Mistral Wind. I mean it is blown to one side permanently.
So that can really cause damage. So you can have damage to the vines. You can of course have problems with pollination, so flowering.
So you could reduce flowering due to the Mistral Wind. But there are some positives. It does chase away any disease pressure. There is very little frost due to the movement of air here.
So really the Mistral it can be positive as well but it's negatives and positives for the main wind pattern here. The area is much flatter than the Northern Rhône. The Northern Rhône is strewn into the Northern Rhône central massif, so that massive central mountain range, and therefore is often on steep slopes with aspects and terraces.
The Southern Rhône here It is not completely flat. There are small mountain ranges, so like the Dantel de Montmérial, which is one around Vaccaras and Gigandas. And there are things leading up towards Montventoux and also then south towards Provence. So you will find some little hill ranges and mountain ranges, but for the most part, it is quite flat.
The picture here is a picture I took when I was at Chateau de Beaucastel in northern Chateauneuf-du-Pape. You can see that very flat expanse with a couple of little hills in the background. So flat, flat land and no aspects really to talk of for most of the vineyards.
Most of the soils here, I mean, there's actually quite a big mixture of soils. It's quite diverse, but the predominant style is what we call galet or galet roulet, which means rolling stones, galet meaning stones. You see.
in this picture and on the previous picture there are these nice rocks which can be hand size and even larger they can often be head size and even bigger so these are big rocks which actually have quite a lot of volume they are able then to actually absorb the heat quite well and varieties like Grenache love this they really need warm conditions so Grenache as in this picture here will be trained as a bush vine very low to the ground to benefit from that ground heat which it adores. So many, many good sites are found for extra ripening and aiding ripening on these galet rocks and soils. And as previously mentioned, Grenache is often found as a bush vine.
So this is a low trained, low density. So low trained as in trained low to the ground. low density as in not too many vines per hectare and really that's because it will need to absorb as much water as possible so developing root systems which are more horizontal to capture the little rainfall that there is in this region during the summer months but really that protection against the mistral wind is that it's lower so it won't be affected as much by the mistral wind and then benefiting from the ground heat from the galets as we previously mentioned.
The secondary black grape here is Syrah, and Syrah is often on trellised systems, so fencing, to mould the vine and give it structure and support. It does suffer the mistrow wind, so the trellising is often quite intensive and quite supportive to make sure that it does survive against those intensive conditions. So the key grape variety then is Grenache, accounting probably close to two-thirds of the production down in the southern Rhone.
So a mightily important grape variety because it really is suited to these dry, arid conditions of the southern Rhone. The grape variety Grenache is a variety which... is a late ripener. So Grenache needs plenty of sunlight and plenty of warmth to produce quality grapes that are not under ripe.
So this area here with its lovely warm summers with plenty of heat and sunshine mean that Grenache is in its element in these conditions. So it ripens rather rather well. One thing about that is that in good years you will find so in warm years you'll find that Grenache ripens nicely but in very hot years there can be over ripening of Grenache and this can also be done by the grape grower could be left on the vine too long this will produce really sort of jammy and overripe characteristics with with Grenache so that is often what is wanted to be avoided within the southern row. It is very tolerant as previously mentioned to drought conditions so it does rather well in this area. It has nice sort of sweet so very very high sugar content is built up in Grenache and in fact when it is harvested and brought into the winery most analysis of it will show that often Grenache is somewhere between 15 to 17% potential alcohol.
One of the fundamental reasons why it is often blended, because it is very high in potential alcohol. It's also quite a delicate grape. So lots of sugar inside, but in fact, thin skins.
And these thin skins mean that there is very light colour. You will have have often very pale wines and often little ox, sorry, little antioxidants. So less tannin. and this means that Grenache does not age normally for the long haul it is a quicker aging style so it oxidizes quite quickly it does have alcohol however that may help it to age a little bit slower in the winery Grenache is commonly put through cold soaking or sometimes called cold maceration and this is to promote brighter fruitier characters so those lovely bright red fruits of Grenache and potentially a little bit of colour as well. Whole bunch fermentations are possible as well, so using a percentage of whole bunches to really create a small, mini environment of semi-carbonic nature within the fermenting vat.
This means that you produce those very juicy, bright characteristics again, similar to what you may find with Gamay in Beaujolais, for instance. It's another way of making a slightly brighter, fruitier wine, often with a little bit more of a silkier sort of texture to it as well. And within this region, all types of vessels are used. So you will find that it's quite complex to say that it is one type of winemaking method because it isn't.
You will find that Grenache can go through semi-carbonic maceration purely like Beaujolais would. It can go through a whole bunch of fermentations, as we mentioned, in stainless steel with cold temperatures that are maintained, or very traditionally in a rustic way with open top fermenters, old oak barrels from French oak, which means that there is oxidation occurring at that point and then maturation. It depends. You will tend to find that more affordable Grenache based wines.
These are things like. Côte d'Orone or Côte d'Orone village will tend to be potentially stainless steel or old oak and then the top crews like Châteauneuf-du-Pape, Girondas will be much more fermented traditionally with yeast and then in oak barrels sometimes with some percentages of new oak. There is careful cap management as well so whilst the fermentation is occurring things like pumping over punching down will happen but it will be gentle because too much skin contact will in fact give too much bitterness within Grenache so they will do careful cap management to maintain a balance within Grenache and the characteristics of Grenache here is a infographic for you so you can have a look at this it's generally concentrated concentrated spiced Red fruit is what we're looking at with Grenache. So things like raspberries, cherries, strawberries with layerings and lashings of spice.
So things like pepper, white pepper, clove, cinnamon, cardamom, all of those kind of notes. And even licorice is possible as well. As I mentioned, in very hot years, these fruits will tend to be less fruit or ripe.
and more cooked, stewed or jammy. And for me these are when the wines get a little bit disappointing when they're overtly jammy. Okay cool and our next bit is just to understand a bit of a working written question.
This is only going to be a six mark question here and then this will be the end of this presentation and then we'll move on to part two which is available for our members only on the portal. So here we have some questions which you may find are very useful. It is the theory, remember, that you really have to study. It has the lowest pass rates in the world with WSET, and it is the written part of it which is the most challenging for students. So here we have a question.
State and describe three reasons why Grenache is well suited to the Southern Rhone. And we've missed out Isda. It's well suited to the southern Rhine, southern Rhine.
So we kind of talked about that, but it's all over that presentation. So I'm going to bring this together for you as a summary. First of all, we mentioned right at the beginning of talking about Grenache that it is a late ripening variety. So it therefore ripens very well in the warm summers of the Mediterranean climate of the southern Rhine.
Please make sure you get key terminology in these answers, it's what WSET really are after. So key terminology like, let me underline this for you, saying that Grenache is late ripening, that means you understand that it needs a lot more sunlight and heat, but then saying it is a Mediterranean climate is very important. And adding in just for extra extra purpose really, warm summers, because it is mentioned in your textbook quite extensively.
So late ripening, warm summers of the Mediterranean climate. Point two, Grenache, remember, needs lots of heat and the geology of the region helps Grenache to ripen. So the soils are often these stones called galleys that are excellent at retaining heat and this aids.
garnacha or grenache as it's known so very important we talked about that so mentioning that you have some knowledge of the stones called galleys and that they retain heat which is ideal for grenache and then it has a high tolerance to drought as we mentioned there is very little rainfall in the southern rhone it tends to be low anyway and then that is reduced by the mistrout wind So the Grenache Vine has very high tolerance to these drought conditions and it's therefore able to survive the extreme conditions that we find here. So three reasons there why it is important and why it does well in the Southern Rhone. You'll notice that there are six marks so there's two marks available per reason that you are giving.
Okay so wonderful. So the next part is available for members only on the Wine with Jimmy portal that you can sign up to. There is over 750 multiple choice questions, over 30 short written answer questions, flashcards, revision sessions and now an epic amount of video content, which is vastly becoming the whole of the level three text.
But we are getting there with this. There's a lot of content. course.
So please do make sure you think about signing up, it is very useful for your studies and to help you in your preparation and confidence for your level 3 examination. So thank you so much for your time, I hope you found this useful. Once again if you have any comments or questions please do get in touch at winewithjimmy is my social media handle or you can email us on the Wine with Jimmy website or you can drop a comment in the video for this video.
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