Maxime Graillot and Thomas Schmittel’s youthful, early-drinking Crozes-Hermitage is sourced primarily from a mature, gravelly, organically farmed site in Pont-de-l’Isère. This site is owned and managed by a good friend and neighbour of the Graillot clan, and the vigneron and producer work closely together. This collaboration has seen the Equinoxe cuvée reach ever-greater heights. The fully destemmed grapes fermented in concrete tanks and large wooden tronconique vats (with a degree of carbonic maceration) and matured for nine months in the same vessel.

This is gorgeously fleshy, fruit-forward kind of Northern Rhone Syrah. A short, nine-day maceration has brought brightly flowing flavours of hedgerow fruits and red-cherry tang matched by nuances of wispy smoke and a snappy, refreshing structure.

Equis’ Saint-Joseph is drawn from two parcels on the steep, granitic slopes of Saint-Jean-de-Muzols, the historic heart of Saint-Joseph opposite the hill of Hermitage. Three-quarters of the blend comes from Syrah planted in the 1980s, while the remainder of the vines were planted in the 1950s. The Desbos family organically farms both parcels without herbicides, and both lie on steep gradients that necessitate work by hand and horse only.

The winemakers work with around 20 to 30% whole bunches, and the wine matured for one year in used ex-Burgundy 228-litre oak casks for 11 months, followed by six months in tronconique. Bottled unfiltered, it’s a layered, rocky style of St-Jo, with taut red and blue fruits complemented by crushed stone, dried dark flowers and iron filing nuances. Proper old-school Northern Rhône.

This Cornas is drawn from the vines of a grower the Graillot family has known for decades. There are three parcels: 25% is from a 20-year-old site on the slopes of the great Cornas lieu-dit Les Chaillots; La Sabarotte (with 35-year-old vines) contributes another 25%; and La Côte (80- to 90-year-old vines, on a 50% gradient) makes up the other half. All are on hillsides where the soils are very rich in granite. The vines have always been organically managed by the owner/grower, Elie Bancel—one of the great characters of the Rhône. Although it is made from purchased fruit, Max and Thomas are quick to point out that they could not manage the vines any better themselves! They also retain the final say on when the grapes are harvested and send their own team to do the picking.

The wine was crafted à la Maxime’s Lises Crozes-Hermitage, save for the addition of a few used 600-litre casks. The whole bunch component was similarly around 25% (depending on the vintage), and the wine was released with an additional year of age).

Les Pends is one of the very finest white lieux-dits in Crozes-Hermitage. Maxime Graillot had been waiting and waiting to get a parcel and finally succeeded in 2014. It’s a sloping, south-facing hillside on white clay and chalk, described by Rhône authority John Livingstone-Learmonth as a “high, high-quality terroir”. The site’s appeal lies in its ability to ripen fruit while retaining a mouthwatering structure courtesy of the limestone-rich soils. Simply, Les Pends is one of the most coveted terroirs in the region for white grapes, and Maxime’s wine—full of alluring floral fruit and stony intensity—explains why. 

Graillot owns just 0.4 hectares of 40-year-old vines densely planted to 75% Marsanne and 25% Roussanne. The grapes are pressed as bunches and ferment with indigenous yeasts, and the wine matures in 600-litre demi-muid and 300-litre cigar. Unlike the Domaine Alain Graillot white—grown on the deep alluvial soils of Pont-de-l’Isère—Graillot does not block malolactic conversion; the limestone soils provide enough freshness and tension. It’s a much bigger puncher than the 2021.

Maxime Graillot’s estate Crozes comes from vineyards near the village of Beaumont-Monteux, only a few kilometres from the Domaine Alain Graillot vines. The lieux-dits are Les Bosquets and Les Pichères. Here, in the most southeasterly part of the appellation, the fast-draining soils mainly comprise alluvial stones and gravel. They are low in clay and, in fact, very similar to the Domaine Alain Graillot soils in Les Chênes Verts, just to the north. Planted throughout the 1980s, the vines are now managed organically.

The fermentations are entirely natural, and Graillot Jr. uses only a small bunch component, usually in the realm of 20-30%. It is, therefore, a wine that tends to ‘come around’ earlier than the 100% whole-bunch wines that carry the Alain Graillot name. The 2022 fermented in concrete vats and was racked into one-, two- and three-year-old Burgundy barrels—purchased from some of the top estates—and a 12-hectolitre Stockinger cask. There is also a tiny quotient of Slavonian oak from Garbellotto. Maxime has judged this beautifully. It’s a fleshy, elegant, engaging Crozes with liquorice and tapenade-infused succulence before a long, mineral close. 

In 2008, Alain and Maxime Graillot took mass-selection cuttings from the recently retired Raymond Trollat, a storied grape-grower and winemaker whose vineyards lie in Saint-Joseph's historic heartland of Saint-Jean-de-Muzols. Trollat identified these vines as Sérine, a selection believed to be an old type of Syrah that was practically wiped out of the northern Rhône when new, more productive, disease-resistant clones became available.

The Graillots planted the cuttings on a tiny 0.2 hectares of sandy soil in Beaumont-Monteux, near Maxime's core vineyard. As the name suggests, the vines are on their own roots (ungrafted)—the name Vignes Franches refers to franc de pied vines. There are just six rows, and now that the vines are fruitful, the wine was made in a single six-year-old Stockinger foudre. The grapes were mostly destemmed, and the wine aged for as long as Maxime saw fit; there is no commercial impetus with this wine—one reason why it has taken us a while to get an allocation!

We only found out about this wine when it was served to us blind by Romain Guiberteau over lunch. We immediately started pestering Max for a few bottles. With so many variables in play—vine age, clone, terroir, yield, season—Graillot is not ready to draw any hard-and-fast conclusions on how this wine differs from his 'classic' Crozes-Hermitage. So far, he sees a deeper mineral seam, and the wine has lovely purity and very fine tannins. This wine is already on its way to becoming another Graillot benchmark.