Today’s wine is one of the great, rare, “insider” wines of the Northern Rhône. As the years pass, Éric Texier becomes an ever-more-influential pillar of not only the Rhône but the broader wine culture.

He makes his vineyards and cellar available as a classroom to an army of interns and aspiring vignerons, many of whom go on to enjoy acclaim and success of their own. Texier is deeply respected for bringing a methodical, research-driven approach to an organic wine community that is often as heavy-handed with dogma as it is light on science. Still, Éric is not a professor or a philosopher—he’s a winemaker, and one of the greats. He produces elegant, terroir-driven red and white wines in Côte-Rôtie, Châteauneuf-du-Pape, and southern Burgundy. Yet despite all the fanfare, I’m always amused that Éric’s finest and most sought-after wines aren’t his priciest bottles from big-name appellations. Instead, Texier’s greatest gems are from ancient-vine Syrah grown in two “no name” villages in the Northern Rhône. Today we are sharing my favorite, Éric’s Vieille Serine “Domaine de Pergaud” from the village of Saint Julien-En-Saint Alban. Just a 25 minute drive south of Hermitage in the Ardèche, this village produces a singular, impossible-to-replicate expression of truly old-vine Rhône Syrah. With impossible elegance, gorgeously floral and mineral aromatics—and a nobility that recalls some of my favorite Côte de Beaune reds—this is a wine that belongs in the glass of any dedicated Northern Rhône enthusiast. We’re even doubling down with a perfectly mature vintage. This is an outstanding, extremely rare wine you won’t find available online anywhere in the US!

Texier is one of the most fascinating minds in wine. In the 1990s, following a love affair with ancient Côte-Rôtie and general disillusionment with his work as a nuclear engineer, Éric dove headfirst into wine—first as a gifted graduate student at the University of Bordeaux, then at Verget in southern Burgundy. He has since become something of a legend, for three reasons: First, as noted above, he has shined a light on vineyard areas that were once prominent but had fallen into disrepair and neglect. Today, these villages produce Éric’s finest wines—always my preference to his costly Côte-Rôtie and Châteauneuf bottlings. Second, Éric is a brilliant and outspoken skeptic. His ability to process and share his uniquely scientific approach to organic farming and additive-free winemaking is highly valued among his peers. Finally, Éric has mastered a minimalist, “old school” Burgundian approach while working primarily in Rhône terroirs. The result is a strikingly diverse range of perfumed, balanced and refined wines that perfectly express their variety and village of origin.

Today’s wine, and label, requires a bit of unpacking, as there’s a lot going on here: St. Julien-en-St. Alban is a tiny village and vineyard area in the Ardèche, at the southern end of the “northern” Rhône Valley. “Vieille Serine” refers to an “old” sub-variety of Syrah, called Serine, which Texier works with both here and across the Rhône river to the east, in the relatively uncharted (but deeply respected) subzone of Brézème. The Brézème designation factors prominently in the Texier legend: He was introduced to the region by a legendary local producer named François Pouchoulin, whose Domaine de Pergaud was the regional standard-bearer (and, in some respects, the only game in town) for decades. The use of “Domaine de Pergaud” on some of Texier’s bottlings is an homage to Pouchoulin.

Brézème is about 20 miles south of Hermitage, on the same (east) side of the Rhône, with vineyard elevations hovering around 300 meters and soils a clay/limestone mix. St. Julien-en-St. Alban is across the Rhône to the west, with higher elevations and granitic soils that impart structure and fine-grained minerality. Today’s “Vieille Serine” is 100% Syrah from extremely old vines in St. Julien-en-St. Alban, from a single parcel that offers a breathtaking view overlooking the western shore of the Rhône. Éric ferments whole grape clusters in a concrete tank with a an extremely brief, one-week maceration. He takes an extremely delicate approach with this wine—avoiding punchdowns and any action that will increase extraction—the goal being a pristine, elegant, and almost Burgundian expression of Syrah in a Northern Rhône terroir. The eventual wine is aged 2.5 years in a large, 2,500-liter foudre before being bottled without sulfur. Éric stresses that his avoidance of sulfur with this wine has nothing to do with faddish “natural wine,” but rather because this site perennially produces perfect wine that requires no additives of any kind. I taste a lot of flawed sulfite-free wine every year, but this bottle is spectacular, and perfectly sound.

Éric Texier’s 2012 Vieille Serine Pergaud is a virtual hike through the hills of the Ardèche. A Mediterranean breeze of wild violets, lavender and shattered granite notes meet a core of densely layered black fruits. This is not a manly, meaty red. No, this bottle, for me, shares a elegant spiritual similarity to central Burgundian reds, more than anything. It’s a wine of pronounced beauty and softness; not aggression. There are many wines in this region that yell and beat their chests—this is a bottle that whispers its seduction. It’s gorgeous stuff. Please decant for one hour and serve at 55-60 degrees in Burgundy stems. This is an outstanding lamb wine, and I encourage you to pour it next to a platter of braised shanks and polenta. Like many great Rhone syrahs, this is also a bottle with strong cellar potential. I’ve enjoyed countless Texier syrahs from the mid 2000s through the present and they only seem to get better with time. So, don’t hesitate to throw a few bottles in the cellar!

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