Viognier: Condrieu's Only Grape, and How It Ages
Updated
Viognier is the only grape permitted in the Rhône appellations of Condrieu and Château Grillet, which sit on the west bank of the river about 40 km south of Lyon, according to Jancis Robinson's Oxford Companion to Wine. That monopoly is a recent piece of luck. By 1965 the variety was close to extinct, with only about 30 acres (12 hectares) left in the whole of France, and one count of the Northern Rhône put it at eight acres producing 1,900 litres of wine. Plantings have climbed hard since: the Rhône now has over 740 acres (299.5 hectares), and California's Central Coast alone carries over 2,000 acres (809 hectares). In the glass you get a full-bodied white with low acidity and aromas of peach, pears, violets and minerality. The colour and the perfume suggest a sweet wine, but Viognier is predominantly dry, and most of it is made to drink young.
Where does Viognier come from?
Nobody knows, and the honest sources say so. The grape is presumed ancient, possibly originating in Dalmatia, in present-day Croatia, and brought to the Rhône by the Romans. We file its country of origin as Croatia and France. Two legends fill the gap. One has the Roman emperor Probus carrying the vine to the region in 281 AD. The other has it packed alongside Syrah on a cargo ship navigating the Rhône towards Beaujolais, captured near the site of present-day Condrieu by a local group of outlaws known as culs de piaux. Oz Clarke's Encyclopedia of Grapes carries both.
The name is no clearer. The likeliest namesake is the French city of Vienne, a major Roman outpost. A rival account derives it from the Roman pronunciation of via Gehennae, the "Road of the Valley of Hell", which reads as a comment on how hard the vine is to farm.
What DNA has settled is the family tree. Profiling at the University of California, Davis in 2004 showed Viognier to be closely related to the Piedmont grape Freisa and a genetic cousin of Nebbiolo, as recorded in the Oxford Companion to Wine.
Where is Viognier grown, and how much is there?
California's Central Coast is the leading producer, with over 2,000 acres (809 hectares) planted, and Californian bottlings run noticeably higher in alcohol than the same grape elsewhere, per the Oxford Companion to Wine. Karen MacNeil's The Wine Bible credits the Rhone Rangers of the mid-1980s with sparking that interest. In France, the majority of Viognier now grows in the Languedoc and sells as Vin de Pays. Georges Duboeuf, the Beaujolais producer, pushed the grape outward with plantings in the Ardèche, and growers elsewhere look for granite soils, whose heat retention suits it, according to Oz Clarke's Encyclopedia of Grapes.
Plantings spread worldwide from the early 1990s. Yalumba is Australia's largest producer, making a white varietal wine and using the grape extensively in its Shiraz blends, from vines in the loam and clay of the Eden Valley. Clare Valley, McLaren Vale, Barossa Valley, Adelaide Hills, Canberra, Mornington Peninsula and the Yarra Valley all carry it too. Argentina and Chile have significant plantings, with producers in Brazil and Uruguay experimenting. In the United States it has reached Washington, Oregon, Texas, Virginia, Michigan, Colorado, New York and Missouri among others, and Virginia named it the state's signature white grape in 2011. New Zealand grows small amounts on Waiheke Island and in Wairarapa, while Hawke's Bay bottles it alone and blends it with Syrah. Israeli wineries including Yarden, Tishbi and Dalton have taken it up, and it also appears in the Cape Winelands of South Africa, the south Moravia region in Czechia, Greece, Japan and Austria.
| Record | What the variety files say |
|---|---|
| Berry skin colour | Blanc, a white wine grape |
| Country of origin | Croatia, France |
| Synonyms | Bergeron, Barbin, Rebolot, Greffou, Picotin Blanc, Vionnier, Petiti Vionnier, Viogne, Galopine, Vugava bijela |
| VIVC number | 13106 |
| Rhône plantings | Over 740 acres (299.5 hectares) |
| California Central Coast | Over 2,000 acres (809 hectares) |
| Sole permitted grape in | Condrieu, Château Grillet |
| Maximum share of a Côte-Rôtie red | 20%, though most growers add no more than 5% |
One synonym is worth flagging before you buy on a label alone. Vionnier is also used for Gouais blanc, a different French wine grape, so the name on its own does not settle what is in the bottle.
Why is Viognier difficult to grow?
Because it is prone to powdery mildew, its yields are low and unpredictable, and the picking window is narrow. Pick too early and the grape never develops the full extent of its aromas and tastes. Pick too late and the wine turns oily and loses its perfume. Fully ripe, the berries are deep yellow and make wine with a strong perfume and high alcohol. In Condrieu, growers often pick at a sugar level that lands the finished wine in the 13% alcohol range, per Oz Clarke's Encyclopedia of Grapes.
Climate has to thread a needle. The Wine and Spirits Education Trust's Understanding Wine Quality notes that the variety needs a long, warm growing season to ripen fully, but not a climate so hot that sugars and potential alcohol run ahead of the aromatics. In the Northern Rhône the Mistral does part of that work, tempering the region's Mediterranean climate and cooling the vines after the severe heat of summer. Vine age counts as well: Viognier vines start to hit their peak after 15 to 20 years, and the Rhône holds vines at least 70 years old.
The wine expert Remington Norman separates two strains, an "Old World" strain most common in Condrieu and a "New World" strain found in the Languedoc and other areas, which make distinctly different wines from the same grape. And because the vine is naturally low-yielding, the WSET flags it as a less economically viable planting for some vineyards. That is the commercial reason the variety nearly vanished, alongside phylloxera in the late 19th century and the abandonment of vineyards during the First World War.
What does Viognier taste like, and how is it made?
Floral aromas first, driven by terpenes, the same compounds found in Muscat and Riesling. Beyond that the aromatic range shifts with site, weather and the age of the vines. Like Chardonnay, Viognier can produce full-bodied wines with a lush, soft character, but with more natural aromatics on top: peach, pears, violets, minerality. Those notes are fragile, and too much exposure to oxygen destroys them, which is why barrel fermentation with this variety asks more of a winemaker than it does with most whites.
Cellar practice follows from that. Grapes are often harvested early in the morning to give the clearest juice. Some winemakers allow contact with the skins, but Viognier skin is high in phenols and long contact leaves an astringent edge. Malolactic fermentation is sometimes used to add weight and cut acidity, and New World producers often stir the lees, a process called batonnage, to build a smoother texture, leaving the wine on its lees until bottling in a manner similar to sparkling wine production.
Sweet Viognier exists and is rare. For the dessert style the grapes come in during late October or early November in the Northern Hemisphere. Condrieu uses a harvest technique called à l'assiette: a plate is held underneath the vine, the vine is shaken, and the overripe grapes drop onto the plate. Fermentation is stopped early with sulphur dioxide so the wine keeps a high level of residual sugar, then it is chilled and sterile filtered so it will not restart in bottle. Botrytis is usually not part of the picture. In the Rhône the grapes are normally unaffected by Botrytis cinerea, though botrytized Viognier is not unheard of.
How long does Viognier keep?
Not long, and treating it as a cellar wine is the expensive mistake. Depending on the winemaking style the grape often hits its peak at one or two years of age, though some examples stay at high quality up to ten years. Condrieu is the version most often meant to be drunk young, while Californian and Australian wines handle age a little better, according to Oz Clarke's Encyclopedia of Grapes.
The reason is aromatic rather than structural. Viogniers more than three years old tend to lose many of the floral aromas that make the wine distinctive, and ageing often yields a crisp drinking wine that is almost flat in the nose. Old-vine and late-harvest bottlings are the exceptions that suit keeping. If you hold whites, drinking windows and the way white wine colour shifts with age will tell you more than a vintage reputation will.
Why does Viognier turn up in red wine?
Because it fixes colour and adds perfume. In the Côte-Rôtie AOC, red blends may include up to 20% Viognier, though most growers add no more than 5%. The grape ripens earlier than Syrah, so it is normally harvested separately and added to the Syrah during fermentation, where co-pigmentation stabilises the colouring of the red wine, per Oz Clarke's Encyclopedia of Grapes. Its low acidity softens a wine made predominantly from Syrah, and it lifts the aroma at the same time.
The habit has travelled. Hawke's Bay blends the two for a Rhône style red, Yalumba uses Viognier in its Shiraz blends, and in some regions the two are co-fermented outright. Our guide to Syrah and Shiraz covers the same practice from the red side. In white blends, the rest of the Rhône mixes Viognier with Roussanne, Marsanne, Grenache blanc and Rolle, and in the Northern Rhône sometimes with Chardonnay. Browse Northern Rhône producers if you want to see who works in the appellations where those rules apply.
What food goes with Viognier?
Spice. Karen MacNeil's The Wine Bible points to the highly aromatic, fruit forward nature of the grape as the reason it pairs well with spicy food such as Thai cuisine. A low-acid, perfumed, full-bodied white is doing different work at the table from a taut one, so treat it as an aromatic partner rather than a palate cleanser. If you want a date to open one, International Viognier Day falls on the last Friday of April and was established in 2021 to celebrate the variety, as Decanter records.
That timing matters more here than with most whites. The risk with Viognier is not that it collapses in a decade. It is that the bottle you are saving for a birthday quietly lost its violets two summers ago. Drink-window data for your cellar flags which whites are drifting past their aromatic peak while you can still pull the cork on them.