2008 Condrieu Chanson

Stephane Montez used three sorting tables for the 2008 harvest, including a top-of-the-line Vaucher-Beguet Mistral, which blows air across the end of the table to blast off any small, unripe grapes that were missed by earlier culling. "The best 2008s will be very feminine wines," Montez told me. "Most people will do a shorter elevage so you won't see wines of extraction and weight, and you should see fewer special cuvees as well. While 2008 was a nightmare for red wines, it came out well for the whites. They remind me a lot of the 1996s, with good acidity and energy." Montez is now using only roussanne for replanting in his white Saint-Joseph vineyards and the percentage of roussanne in his current wines is now up to almost one-third.