Château Rayas

There are few estates in the Rhône as storied as Château Rayas. It’s hidden away in the woods, where Emmanuel Reynaud and his sons craft wines that are in a style and class all of their own. It was established in 1880 by Albert Reynaud, a notary, who purchased the estate after going deaf at the age of 45. Emmanuel is understandably not keen to share quite how he manages to coax such complexity and texture from his Grenache.

What we do know is that he cultivates his tall bush vines organically on sandy soils, and both Château Rayas and its sibling Pignan (both named after the lieux-dits from which they come) are pure old-vine Grenache. He doesn’t destem the fruit, and opts for a very light extraction; the wines are then aged in large old barrels.

The result is a wine that pale in colour, relatively light in tannin, with a highly distinctive aroma of rose petals, blood orange, strawberry jam and dried herbs. Both Rayas and Pignan are spellbinding wines that once tasted, are never forgotten.