Awards & Accolades:

5 Star Award – Decanter Magazine – “Very deep colour, mineral leather, aniseed and tar, symphonic complexity. Pleasing palate, good tannins, quite impressive encyclopedic fruit profile and real depth of flavour. 3 – 15 years.”

Tanners Wine Merchant – “From the tallest man in the Rhône, Florent Viale, a quite modern, showy style with lots of oak which comes over as creamy, spicy and full in the mouth, yet still elegant. Dark fruit in the middle, a style that improves with age.”

About This Wine:

“Wine deserves respect!” likes to remind us Philippe Walbaum, whose intonations and imaged language enchant all who meet him. Above all, this strong-willed man is a vigneron who has a fascination for his art, a lover and a champion of the wine-growing traditions of his beautiful region of the Ardèche

About The Winery:

In the authentic setting of a family-owned wine growing domain, come and discover an array of ‘vins de pays’ produced with the quality and respect which are the hallmarks of the age-old tradition of the wines from the Ardèche. Nobody who has ever been to Le Colombier ever forgets his or her visit!

You are warmly welcomed: "Bienvenue !

At the Domaine du Colombier, everything is arranged so as to provide the warmest of welcomes, to offer superb and friendly wine-tasting moments to our visitors. The setting, with its stonewalls, set off by columns, cypress trees and manicured lawns is as beautiful as the welcome is friendly.

About The Winemaker:

Florent Viale, whose father used to sell his Hermitage fruit to Guigal, started making his own wine in 1991. This tiny property is situated on the outskirts of Tain l’Hermitage, just below the Hermitage hill itself and is one of the finest in the appellation.

Additional Intel:

Extract from the book: The Wines of the Northern Rhône Valley by John Livingstone-Learmont, University of California Press

Every appellation needs its “engine room” domaines – those that keep turning out well-made wines without fuss and pretensions. Colombier is one such estate.

Very tall, chatty, and charming, Florent Viale runs the wine side. His grandfather was a mixed farmer, with chickens, cows, and horses, plus vines and fruit. The family continues to cultivate fruit trees and since 1991 has bottled and sold its wine. Previously the Hermitage was sold to Guigal, the red Crozes to Ogier and to Burgundy, and the white Crozes to Paul Jaboulet Aîné – good addresses all. Now just about 10 per cent, from the young vines and the press wine, goes away in bulk.

The cellars are part of a pretty domaine at the foot of the east side of the Hermitage hill and have been there for three generations. Father Gaby, born in 1939, is a contemporary of Albert Belle, and both men set off on their own domaine wine track at about the same time. The Viales have always worked half in fruit, notably apricots plus some cherry and peach. Cherries are the least popular fruit from the angle of their harvesting clashing with vineyard work in mid-May.

The vineyard holdings have grown in the past few years. There are over 13 hectares of Syrah for their Crozes, 1.9 hectares of Marsanne for the white, and precious 1.81 hectares for the Hermitage.

The Crozes Syrah grows on gentle, tractor-friendly terraces around Mercurol and Tain. Colombier itself is right in the commune of Tain, with a filtering, sandy-sediment soil topped with broken stones. At Mercurol the soil is more red clay, with a couch of gravel about a metre down. Their Crozes runs over a dozen or so plots.

The Marsanne grows in four plots; many of the vines date back between 70 and 100 years, their centre being Croix du Torras, right next to the most easterly slope of Hermitage, Les Signeaux, or Torras et les Garennes as it is now known. The other three plots are at Mercurol, led by a notable 0.3 ha of 1902 Marsanne on Les Pends. “We bought this in 1997,” recalls Florent; “it’s a fantastic old vineyard, but it took me four winters with my pickaxe to get it in better shape. The old owner would deliver the crop to the Cave de Tain.” The other sites at Mercurol are Mont Rousset and Creux Charbonnier.

The outlook is practical. Spraying is done against grape worm blight, but likewise, excess leaves are cleared and the soil is banked and worked. “I adapt as necessary,” says Florent: “I just want healthy vines.”

Florent was a latecomer to the domaine, having worked off a serious amount of wanderlust. His travels took him to Central America and Africa, and he worked as a ski instructor in the Vercors mountains nearby, before a year’s training in the Libourne near Bordeaux in 1988. He has a relaxed attitude and with his broad outlook is happy to chat beyond the subject of wine.

The Syrah is vinified whole in a variety of vats – concrete, steel and wood; a 30-hectolitre open wood vat is from his grandfather’s time, and Florent does a foot pigeage on this: “It’s useful to help me judge the vintage quality because in the good years it’s hard to break down the top crust; I wear my bathing trunks for that.”

The Crozes is fermented for two weeks, around the 30 C mark, with the end temperature rising to 34 C before gradually descending to 22 C and devatting. Florent is careful about excess heat for the loss of fruit it can bring.

Ageing is 50 to 60 per cent in cask, with the demi-muid 600-litre barrel favoured, the rest steel or enamel vats. The Gaby cuvée is selected from the best casks wine, one month before bottling around November, 14 months after the harvest.

The classic red shows soft fruit, with a sprinkling of tannin, a wine that is fine to drink within three to six years old, although it should last longer. The Gaby rouge (18,000 bottles) has more scale – increased black fruit and tarry content. It gains leathery tones with age and drinks well towards 12 years old or so.

The white receives only a light decantation after pressing, and is then 80 per cent vat, 20 per cent oak fermented, and raised for 10 months. Since 1997 there has also been a Cuvée Gaby white (1,500 bottles), all done in new wood for a year when conditions lend themselves (there was no Gaby in 2000). Florent’s comments on this are a relief to hear: “We started to make this wine with lees stirring, but the wine came out too massive and wooded, with low acidity and a loss of finesse. Now we let the malo occur.”