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If all the Northern Rhône producers we work with today, Domaine Marsanne was the first whose wines Kermit imported, back in the early 1980s. “My first taste of [the domaine’s] wine,” he wrote in the February 1982 newsletter, “was in Burgundy when Aubert de Villaine served the 1977 at lunch in Bouzeron.” After a brief period of importing the family’s Saint Josephs and Crozes-Hermitages, the family prioritized its small production for local clientele and Kermit went on to find other vignerons around the region’s sleepy villages who would ultimately help turn such appellations as Cornas, Côte-Rôtie, Hermitage, and Saint-Joseph into the revered sources of Syrah they are today.
     Then, a few years ago, Kermit recognized the Marsanne name on a wine list in Paris and, remembering his relationship with the family decades before, ordered a bottle. Providing great pleasure and typicity of its northern Rhône terroir, the bottle was enough to inspire renewed contact with the current generation of Marsannes, Jean-Claude and his two daughters, who produce not only exquisite Saint-Josephs but also an inviting and exuberant Collines Rhodaniennes Syrah from two granitic lieux-dits, Les Chalaix and Pout, planted in 2016. Whereas Marsanne’s Saint-Josephs and even the Crozes-Hermitage possess dark-fruited depth, this cuvée is all about the charms, deliciousness, and fun of young-vine Syrah. These aren’t qualities you might often associate or get to experience from the grape variety, but this bottling will no doubt change that. 

- Kermit Lynch Selections

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