In 2008, Alain and Maxime Graillot selected mass-selection cuttings from the recently retired Raymond Trollat, a storied grape-grower and winemaker whose vineyards lie in Saint-Joseph’s historic heartland of Saint-Jean-de-Muzols. Trollat identified these vines as Sérine, a selection believed to be an old type of Syrah that was practically wiped out of the northern Rhône when new, more productive and disease-resistant clones became available.
The Graillots planted the cuttings on a tiny 0.2 hectares of sandy soil in Beaumont-Monteux, near Maxime’s core vineyard. As the name suggests, the vines are on their own roots (ungrafted)—Vignes Franches is franc de pied by another name. There are just six rows, and now that the vines are fruitful, the wine is made in a single Stockinger foudre that is six years old. The grapes are mostly destemmed, and the wine ages for as long as Maxime sees fit; there is no commercial impetus with this wine—one reason why it has taken us a while to get an allocation!
In fact, we only found out about this wine when it was served to us blind by Romain Guiberteau over lunch. We immediately started pestering Max for a few bottles. With so many variables in play—vine age, clone, terroir, yield, season—Graillot is not ready to draw any hard-and-fast conclusions on how this wine differs from his ‘classic’ Crozes-Hermitage. So far, he does see a deeper mineral seam and the wine has lovely purity and very fine tannins. The answers to all other questions lie at the end of a corkscrew.