2019 Côte-Rôtie La Rose Brune

The Chirat family is highly regarded for the wines produced at Vignobles Chirat. The property includes noteworthy holdings in the best sectors of Condrieu, but its reds from Saint-Joseph and Côte-Rôtie are still a bit of an insider’s secret. Fruit from Chirat’s vineyards, which were first established in 1925, has long been sold to negociants, including some of the most highly regarded ones. With the arrival of Aurélien Chirat in 2012, more of the crop began staying in-house. In 2014, Chirat also acquired the family’s first vines in Côte-Rôtie, in the highly prized Côte Rozier. The wines are proving to be consistently excellent. Sadly, just over 100 cases are made per vintage. Chirat wines here lean towards the clean, modern side, but not excessively so, with about 25% whole clusters and 25% new oak on average used for the red wines.

Aurélien Chirat is an under-the-radar, rising star in the northern Rhône who is producing lively, finely detailed wines that put fruit to the fore while maintaining the balance to age. Fans of the wines made by his neighbor, Stéphane Montez, in the somewhat isolated hilltop village of Saint-Michel-sur-Rhône will be familiar with the style, but Chirat’s wines tend to show a somewhat lighter touch, if still possessing plenty of power. In both 2018 and 2019, he said, the trick was to protect the fruit from becoming overripe, even raisined due to the heat. Because there was well-timed rain in both vintages “the fruit was able to retain its acidity,” so the wines “both show a good marriage of richness and life,” without the cooked character that can come with “truly solar years.”