Photo Essay: Comparing Les Pallières and La Crau

6 min read

About 30 seconds after turning onto Chemin de Lencieu off the Route de Vaison-le-Romanée, I made up mind on Les Pallières: I was going to like this place. I already knew I adored the wines, as they were a rare mix of Southern Rhône bravado and mountain-fruit freshness. Now, as the road stretched out before me and my wife, I could see we were entering a secret world of forest, exuberant fruit-bearing plants and bird song. It was nearly 10am but there was still plenty of shade thanks to the shadows cast by the ancient foothills of the Dentelles de Montmirail. This was a side of Gigondas not found in a text book.

A Gigondas Grand Cru of Sorts

“We have about 200 acres of woods around the vineyard. It’s for us, a great element of taking a kind of freshness around the vines.”
Daniel Brunier
Proprietor

Les Pallières is not configured for visitors, so it took a minute for us to locate Daniel Brunier at the largely empty property. He had agreed to meet us and give me a tour of his vineyard for an assignment I was working in.

With their Vieux-Télégraphe estate, Brunier’s family is Châteauneuf-du-Pape royalty, and his business partner at Les Pallières is American icon Kermit Lynch. In 1998, the esteemed property — which had been tended to by the same family for 500 years — went up for sale. Everyone in the Southern Rhône wine community murmured about who would buy Les Pallières and what would become of Gigondas’ de facto Grand Cru. Deep pockets were required, and while the Brunier family has done very well for itself, few expected them to be in the mix. Yet the partnership pulled it off, and they immediately committed to preserving the special parcel and its unique attributes, starting with its biodiversity.

“We have about 200 acres of woods around the vineyard,” Brunier told me as I tried to keep pace with him as we crossed the road and strolled into the higher vines, which were still in shadow. “It’s for us, a great element … a kind of freshness around the vines.”

But to make a wine that lived up to the property’s reputation, some experimentation was required. Brunier told me that early on they had “some serious reflection around tannins,” because the single cuvée from the property felt disjoined. “We didn’t like the tannins when they were all together,” he said. “They were fighting a bit. It was difficult for them to be harmonious.”

The solution came in separating the property into two parcels for two different wines, with the dividing mark of 250 meters above sea level keeping the tannic peace so to speak.

“That means from 250 meters to 400, it’s called ‘Terrasse du Diable.’ It’s in a specific cuvée. This row here, it is still in the 200 meters [range] so that means it’s in the other cuvée called ‘Racines’ — which means ‘roots’ in French — and it is also where we have the oldest vines.”

Despite its lack of connection to the church, I was struck by a seemingly monastic tranquility at Les Pallières. This was a place to not only grow vines, make wine, and — as it turns out — raise goats for a special forage de chèvre inflected with the terroir of the forest, but also to contemplate and feel the rhythms of nature.

I was allowed to photograph the vines for an hour while my wife was swarmed by eight labrador puppies. Brunier, eventually, had another appointment to make, and so we moved on to the village of Gigondas for a strenuous stroll to the top, followed by lunch at Marceau. We, too, were due somewhere in the afternoon: a tasting at Vieux Télégraphe.

To Châteauneuf-du-Pape’s La Crau

The first contrast one notes between Gigondas and Châteauneuf-du-Pape is how pastoral the former is, how urban the later is. One does not see vines immediately when approaching Vieux Télégraphe’s winery from the north, partly because you are suffering from the tunnel vision of the A7. There are tree-lined barriers, berms and concrete walls. You are not yet swallowed by Avignon, but the business of industrial pulses through the highway corridor, obscuring what lays atop the plateau to your right: a vast expanse of hearty, gnarled vineyards making one of the world’s most prestigious wines.

The facility hidden in a grove of trees is modern, polished and high end. We toured the cellar, bore witness to the archive of Vieux Télégraphe vintages, and then hopped in a car with export manager Claire Latcher to be driven to the top of the esteemed La Crau section of the appellation. Suddenly, Châteauneuf-du-Pape emerged: brightly light from its pale stones, and as unshaded as the sea. I’ve never seen such a startling contrast between two relatively adjacent vineyards, both representing extremes within their respective areas.

La Crau is as harsh and unforgiving as any vineyard I’ve ever strolled. The famous galets roulés — the round stones that cover the area — are both aesthetically interesting to a photographer like me, but also hell on the feet and ankles. The only thing growing up on that plateau were grapevines, and they were majestically thick, twisted and woody — survivors of the highest order. Yet it was a monoculture, a place exposed to not only the elements, but also a warming future. I couldn’t help but ponder its fate. Yet here, too, was a special place of unique geography and human ingenuity. I was struck by how soulful it felt.

The wines from both places are also of the highest order, but to my palate, one is substantially more suited to my tastes: the two wines from Les Pallières. From that elevated and ensconced-in-forest perch up against the mountains, the power seems to come from the freshness of the fruit, not so much the alcohol. And because of that, amazing things are allowed to emerge on the nose and palate.

Much of this has to do with the fundamental differences between Gigondas and Châteauneuf-du-Pape, something that these wines, from the apex producer of both appellations, show perfectly well. The former has always been in the shadow of the latter, partly because the CdP story holds such a power on our imagination. But if you are going on what’s in the glass, I am not so sure the maxims of old will continue to hold. They are two distinctively different wines of origin stemming from a similar backbone of Grenache — your desire for power or grace should be the lone factor in choosing which one.

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