I have 12 vintages of Guigal Cotes du Rhone between 1976 and 2005 in my cellar, wines that are linked by a common history, most obviously the maker and region. Behind those are an article I wrote for my then newspaper, The National Times, in which I said that Guigal’s ’76 was the best value French wine I had ever tasted. It was being sold by Canberra retailer Farmer Bros for what I think was $6 a bottle, maybe less. Its importer was Melbourne-based Winesearch, which subsequently changed its name to Thomas, Thomas & Wilden, and remained a Rhone Valley importer until Negociants assumed distribution. David Farmer got on the phone and ordered a container to satisfy the orders that had flooded in, and was still ordering containers when the ’79 came on stream, hence the gold ‘Farmer Bros’ strip above the label.
Light but healthy brick-red colour. It may be autosuggestion, but the bouquet has the lavender and earth of the garrigue of the Southern Rhone Valley that gave birth to this wine. It is light-bodied in terms of structure, and particularly tannins, the latter now only a memory. Yet its wondrously long palate still has a core of sweet fruit, stewed (in the best descriptive sense) if you must, and a burst of spices. It’s a glorious example of a 40-year-old inexpensive wine that’s not going to fade away any time soon.
James Halliday
