Who It's For: Rhône collectors, Syrah devotees, advanced students, and anyone who has been meaning to finally see what all the Côte-Rôtie conversation is about.
Côte-Rôtie is one of the smallest of the great wine appellations and one of the most influential. The vineyards run along a steep, south-facing hillside above the Rhône, split into the darker soils of the Côte Brune and the lighter, sandier soils of the Côte Blonde. Syrah takes the lead here, sometimes co-fermented with a small percentage of Viognier, and the wines end up somewhere between the muscle of the northern Rhône and the perfume of Burgundy.
This masterclass is built for range. Six producers, six vintages, and a couple of single-vineyard bottlings tucked into the flight, including one of Guigal's legendary La Las. The lineup is designed to move across producer philosophy and across vintage character at the same time, so you can feel how a warm year drinks differently from a cool one, how a traditional grower differs from a house-driven style, and how a top single-vineyard bottling separates itself from the appellation-level wines around it.