Côte-Rôtie 'Les Côtes'
Côte-Rôtie AOC · Northern Rhône, France
- 100ml
- £22
- Bottle
- £185
A Coravin draws the wine through the cork under argon without opening the bottle. It lets us pour 100ml of wines we could not otherwise offer by the glass.
- Grape
- Syrah · Viognier
- Vintage
- 2022
- Region
- Côte-Rôtie, Rhône
The short version
Slopes over sixty degrees where no tractor can go — every vine on a single stake, worked by hand.
Jules Barge was the first in Côte-Rôtie to bottle his own wine, in 1929. The family has farmed Ampuis since 1860.
Twenty-eight months in barrel, and not an oaky wine. The glass to pour with dry-aged beef.
How it tastes
Aroma & flavour
Sell it with
10oz 28 Day Dry Aged Sirloin, Onion Jam & Herb Salad
Our own list calls this the one place to spend on dry-aged beef over embers. The wine's black pepper effectively seasons the meat, the fine tannin and saline finish cut through aged fat and hard char, and the olive savouriness meets the umami of the ageing head-on. Sell this glass with the steak.
Where to take them next
The detail — if they ask
Syrah with a splash of Viognier co-fermented in the same vat — the classical Côte-Rôtie trick, which fixes the colour and adds the perfume. Partial whole bunch, native yeast, then twenty-eight months in 600-litre demi-muids, deliberately large and mostly old so the oak never shows. No fining, no filtration. Very fine tannins and a saline finish.
Domaine Barge
- Producer
- The family has farmed Ampuis since 1860, and Jules Barge was the first in Côte-Rôtie to sell domaine-bottled wine, in 1929. Julien Barge, the fifth generation, has run it since 2019, working without herbicides.
- Region
- Côte-Rôtie means the roasted slope. 342 hectares in total, on terraces held by dry-stone walls the locals call murgers, on gradients over sixty degrees where no tractor can go. Every vine is trained to a single wooden stake and worked by hand.
- Grapes
- Syrah at its northern frontier — black pepper, olive, violet and smoked meat rather than the sweet blueberry of warmer places. Savoury before it is fruity.
'Les Côtes' blends Côte Brune and Côte Blonde — the iron-rich dark schist half and the fine, perfumed pale gneiss half, named in local legend for a lord's dark- and fair-haired daughters. One glass, both.