Northern Rhone Valley growths have the luxury of dealing with a supply conundrum

pirits were high and the weather was good for the second day of the trade event Découvertes en Vallée du Rhône (DVR) on April 4 in Tain l’Hermitage, in the northern Rhone Valley. “In some ways, the northern Rhone Valley is on cloud nine”, summed up Luc Tardy who grows wine at Domaine du Murinais. The estate produces 100,000 bottles of Crozes-Hermitage which are marketed in on-premise outlets and export markets. A frequent attendee of the exhibition, he says “there are always interesting contacts but they take more and more time to actually materialise into a transaction”. Not that this worries him, he is not here to look for new customers. “I have sold my 2021s and my 2022s haven’t been bottled yet. The main purpose of my visit is to maintain relations”, he smiles.

“Crozes-Hermitage is performing well”, confirms the appellation’s chairman, Yann Chave. “We have been riding the crest of several good vintages. Exports are mostly growing and on-premise outlets are doing well. Crozes-Hermitage now has a presence across the whole of France, particularly the western part of the country which was uncharted territory for us. The price of bulk has increased so much that it is virtually on a par with the price of bottles in super/hypermarkets, which is not very healthy. For the whites, demand outstrips supply by a long chalk”. At the exhibition, Chave was delighted by the “very high quality” contacts and strong return of buyers from North America, with Asia still taking a back seat.

With a combination of small harvests and large sales, “we’re going to need to fill up our cellars this year”, sums up Tardy at Domaine du Murinais. “There is a slight shortage of volume to cope with demand. These are rich people’s problems, but they are problems all the same…”