Ferraton Pere & Fils

Ferraton Pere & 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 Rhone. 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 Rhone, 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 Selections 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, Cote-Rotie, Condrieu and Saint-Peray in the north, and Chateauneuf-du-Pape, Gigondas, Tavel, Cotes du Rhone and Cotes du Rhone Villages in the south. Few producers work at both ends of the Rhone properly. Most pick one.

The wines are organised in three tiers. Tradition is the entry level. Lieu-dit wines are named for a specific place: Le Parvis in Chateauneuf, La Source in Saint-Joseph, La Matiniere in Crozes-Hermitage, Samorens in the Cotes du Rhone. At the top the Selections Parcellaires carry the great vineyard names, Le Meal and Les Dionnieres in Hermitage, Les Oliviers in Saint-Joseph, L'Eglantine in Cote-Rotie.

What I like about Ferraton is that the house style is quite restrained for the Rhone. 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.

Two wines sit at opposite ends of the valley. The Saint-Joseph 'La Source' Blanc is pure Marsanne off the granite of the right bank, and white Saint-Joseph is one of the great overlooked wines of France: there is very little of it, and it does something between white Burgundy and Rhone richness that is hard to find elsewhere at the price. Le Parvis Chateauneuf-du-Pape is the southern wine, Grenache-led and generous, and it is bottled in magnum as well, a format that ages more slowly and is worth having in a cellar or on a table with eight people round it.

The Hermitage and the Cote-Rotie are where Ferraton's reputation was made, and where the prices go up sharply.