Skip to main content 

Welcome to…
That Useful Wine Site

  Wine explained, clearly and helpfully, including critic-recommended specimens of each variety.

(click for menu)
bottles grapes glasses barrels
You are here:  Home  »  varietals  »  whites  »   ( = this page)
(Click on any image above to see it at full size.)
You are here:  Home  »  varietals  »  whites  »   ( = this page)

You can get a site directory by clicking on the “hamburger” icon () in the upper right of this page.
Or you can search this site with Google (standard Google-search rules apply).
(Be aware that “sponsored” links to other sites will appear atop the actual results.)

Search term(s):





Welcome to That Useful Wine Site!

You have apparently come to this page from a link on a search engine or another site. If this is your first visit here, I much recommend that you take a few minutes to look over the introductory material accessible via the blue “Introductory” zone of the Site Menu available from the “hamburger” icon in the upper right of this (and every) page. An understanding of the purposes and principles of organization of this site will, I hope and believe, much augment your experience here, for this page and in general. You can simply click this link to get at the site front page, which, unsurprisingly, is the best place to start. Thank you for visiting.

The Roussanne Grape


Quick page jumps:


About Roussanne

(Synonyms: Barbin, Bergeron, Fromental, Fromenteau, Martin Cot, Petite Rousette, Roussanne Blanc)

Background

Map showing France's Rhône wine region.

Roussanne is a white-wine grape originating in the Rhône Valley of France. It is generally considered one of the dozen and a half or so of world-class white-wine grapes. It is not commonly bottled as a monovarietal; rather, as is usual practice in the Old World, it is used in named regional blends, typically with Marsenne but also sometimes with Viognier. it is an important contributor to world-famed whites, such as those of Châteauneuf-du-Pape, and is often the dominant wine in the blend (even up to being all in some places in some years). In blends, it is said to add aromatics, elegance and acidity—the acidity lending such blends the capability to improve with substantial bottle age.

Besides the Rhône, Roussanne is planted in meaningful amounts in Australia, California, and Washington State (it is also grown in Italy, but is a lesser grape there), and is beginning to take hold in Texas as well.

The quality of Roussanne wines in youth is intense aromas, typically of a floral character, but also of fruit and herbs. As the wine ages, an overtone of nuttiness appears (not an uncommon procession for ageworthy white wines).

Factoid: Roussanne is one of those wines that are widely believed to experience a “dumb period” in its bottle development: a stage wherin it is “closed” and unyielding. That stage, for Roussanne, seems to lie between 3 or 4 years of age on to 7 or 8 years of age. (Drink early, or wait a good while.)

Return to the page top. ↑


Some Descriptions of Roussanne Wines

Return to the page top. ↑


Some Roussanne Bottlings to Try

(About this list.)

  Wines with a critics’ consensus score of 90:
Covenant Wines "Mensch" Roussanne   [or search Cellar Tracker for this wine]

Return to the page top. ↑




Disclaimers  |  Privacy Policy


All content copyright © 2024 The Owlcroft Company
(excepting quoted material, which is believed to be Fair Use).

This web page is strictly compliant with the WHATWG (Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group) HyperText Markup Language (HTML5) Protocol versionless “Living Standard” and the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) Cascading Style Sheets (CSS3) Protocol v3  — because we care about interoperability. Click on the logos below to test us!




This page was last modified on Sunday, 8 December 2024, at 9:46 pm Pacific Time.