Producer Southern Rhône, France
Ferraton Pere & Fils
Ferraton Père & Fils began in 1946, when Jean Orens Ferraton, a grower and the son of a grower, started making and selling wine under his own name in the northern Rhône. The house has been rooted at the foot of the hill of Hermitage ever since. His son Michel took it further and made the first Ferraton Hermitage, Crozes-Hermitage and Saint-Joseph, the three appellations the house is still identified with.
The turning point came through friendship. Michel Chapoutier, whose family are neighbours and one of the great names of the northern Rhône, was close to the Ferratons and brought his knowledge to the estate. In 1998 the vineyards were converted to organic viticulture and certified, and the house later moved on to biodynamics. Their parcel selections, the Sélections Parcellaires at the top of the range, are all made from biodynamically grown grapes. That is a claim about the top tier rather than about everything with the name on it, which is worth knowing.
Ferraton is both a domaine, farming its own vines, and a merchant house buying fruit and wine from growers it has long relationships with, and the range reflects that. It runs across an unusually wide sweep of the valley for a house of this size: Hermitage, Crozes-Hermitage, Saint-Joseph, Cornas, Côte-Rôtie, Condrieu and Saint-Péray in the north, and Châteauneuf-du-Pape, Gigondas, Tavel, Côtes du Rhône and Côtes du Rhône Villages in the south. Few producers work at both ends of the Rhône properly. Most pick one.
The wines are organised in three tiers. Tradition is the entry level. The lieu-dit wines in the middle are each named for a specific place, in Châteauneuf, Saint-Joseph, Crozes-Hermitage and the Côtes du Rhône. At the top the Sélections Parcellaires carry the great vineyard names, Le Méal and Les Dionnières in Hermitage, Les Oliviers in Saint-Joseph, L'Églantine in Côte-Rôtie.
What I like about Ferraton is that the house style is quite restrained for the Rhône. The whites in particular are made without much intervention; the Saint-Joseph blanc ferments on its own wild yeasts and only a small part sees oak. Nothing here is trying to be bigger than it needs to be.
White Saint-Joseph, made from Marsanne off the granite of the right bank, is one of the great overlooked wines of France. There is very little of it, and it does something between white Burgundy and Rhône richness that is hard to find anywhere else. At the other end of the valley, Châteauneuf-du-Pape shows the generous, Grenache-led side of the house.
The Hermitage and the Côte-Rôtie are where Ferraton's reputation was made, and where the prices go up sharply.
Winery at Tain-l'Hermitage, Northern Rhône · Grenache, Syrah, Mourvèdre and Marsanne · £30.95 to £67.95 a bottle
