2003 Côte-Rôtie La Landonne

Finishing touches were being made to Guigal's massive new cuverie on the route nationale, across the street from the original facility, when I visited in November. With a stainless-steel tank capacity of 25,700 hectoliters and a cellar that's literally the size of an American football field, the Guigals have realized their dream of having all of their wines under their own watch in Ampuis. I might have to bring a bicycle next year to get around the cellar. White wines are a very big deal here:Guigal makes almost 45% of all Condrieu, and Philippe Guigal is very high on the 2005 vintage. "The wines are more crisp, more mineral and more floral than the 2004s," he told me, "and 2004 is an outstanding vintage. "I also tasted samples of the 2005 single-site Cote-Roties and they are, predictably, to die for; Guigal did not present the '04s as he felt they were in a particularly awkward stage of their evolution in barrel.

As impressively-and often dramatically-as the Guigal red wines showed this year, some of the most intriguing moments occurred while I tasted through the expanding range of white wines on offer here.Vintage 2004 provided a marvelous opportunity to make intense, sharply focused whites that accurately reflect their sites, and Philippe Guigal is very pleased with the family's results.The red wines from 2004, as elsewhere in the Rhone Valley, show brighter red fruit qualities and greater elegance than the 2003s, but the character of 2003 hardly concerned the Guigals."We like to go with the vintage, rather than try to correct it or change its essential character," Philippe Guigal told me."Most people were scared of the ripeness of 2003 but we decided to go for maximum expression of this crazy year," he added.Macerations here are lengthy as a rule, but in 2003 they were extended to a full month, "for as much extraction as possible."The result, in the opinion of Philippe, is a group of wines "that are among the best we have ever made.I am incredibly happy."

Marcel Guigal expressed the opinion that Cote-Rotie was the most successful appellation in France in 2003. While my own tastings suggest that it's more variable in quality than Guigal believes, and too freakish to be considered a truly great vintage, Guigal's own single-vineyard Cote-Roties are stunningly rich, and his new Hermitage Ex-Voto is a monument in the making. Guigal, not surprisingly, took an approach to vinification different from that of most of his colleagues in the Northern Rhone:he did a longer fermentation than usual (between four and five weeks) and managed to extract very suave tannins. For those of you keeping score at home, 25% of the production of this large house is white wine, whereas in the RhoneValley as a whole, according to Marcel's son Philippe Guigal, white wine accounts for 3. 2% of the total. And Guigal vinified 40% of all Condrieu made in vintage 2004, according to Philippe. Clearly, the Guigals succeed in the marketplace with their white wines because they like them round and full-bodied; they are not fans of acidity in these wines.