2021 Yannick Alleno & Michel Chapoutier Cotes du Rhone

Any Michelin starred restaurant looking to craft a custom cuvée needs it to be best-in-class. When we’re talking about a chef with seventeen stars? Only the most elite wineries are eligible.

That’s the pedigree we’re talking about with Yannick Alléno and Michel Chapoutier’s rare Côtes du Rhône. It’s a bold, Syrah-dominant blend from one of France’s most acclaimed chefs and a man who has FORTY 100-point scores to his name. This has the power and complexity of wines twice its price, with all the polish and attention to detail you’d expect from two noted perfectionists. 

A Master Sommelier friend, who has plenty of experience with Michelin three-star service, explained it this way: “When a restaurant of that caliber creates a custom bottling, it HAS to overdeliver—the only acceptable outcome is to blow guests away.” We certainly were.

Yannick Alléno is a chef who has made a career out of the finest of fine dining. He’s taken three separate restaurants to Michelin three-star status, and has earned seventeen stars across his restaurants. He’s obsessed with the “gastronomisation” of terroir—the idea that a chef can use techniques in the kitchen to highlight what’s special about the origins of a raw ingredient—which led him to take a deep foray into the world of wine.

His partner is none other than his friend Michel Chapoutier, whose forty 100-point scores anoint him as one of the gods of French winemaking. For their collaboration, they chose to stay in Chapoutier’s backyard: the Northern Rhône. Syrah is king here, and Chapoutier has a masterful touch with the grape—and an intimate knowledge of the region’s best sites.

The Alléno & Chapoutier project works primarily with sites in St.-Joseph and Crozes-Hermitage, which are some of the best appellations in France for the intersection of quality and value. That comes through marvelously here. Chapoutier and his team keep the winemaking restrained with 12 months of aging in concrete tanks, allowing the wine to harmonize without the intrusion of oak flavors.

• Fruit Intensity
• Oak Intensity
• Body
• Acidity
• Tannin

• ABV 14.50%
• 1 hour
• Now – 2033
• % Syrah% Garnacha
• Serving temperature – 58°
• Cork