It’s tempting to keep this article short because people will buy this wine almost no matter what we say here. But we are here to educate as well as to sell, so we thought it would make sense to take a couple of paragraphs to remind everyone why it is that Gonon is so well loved.

Gonon produces St. Joseph in the very heart of the AOC (See our Complete Guide to the Northern Rhone Wine Region). The “original” AOC, when first set up, consisted only of a handful of villages at its (present) southern end, alongside Cornas, to its south. In later years, flatter lands to the north were added, and in fact most of the St. Joseph produced today is grown in those lesser sites. And it is not as good.

Gonon’s particular village is Mauves, one of the star villages with it steep, solid granite vineyard sites. Mauves is not a well-known name today, as the branding provided by the AOC has taken over, but this was historically recognized as one of France’s great sources of wine, earning references like Victor Hugo’s in Les Miserables.

Gonon, in short, possesses terroir that is equal to the greatest sites of Hermitage or Cote Rotie. They (the original Pierre Gonon left his winery to his two sons) farm the vines exclusively by hand (machines would never work on those steep slopes) and are certified organic. They work exclusively in a traditional manner, but with a focus on precision and purity. Their cellarwork would not look unfamiliar to anyone who has visited Jean-Louis Chave, for instance. 

But we’ve written stuff like this about other producers. When a producer is truly great, you get to a point where you can’t really come up with reasons and arguments that explain the greatness. Instead, you drink the wines and you recognize the magic. Ask a wine-maker, and they will tell you that it isn’t really magic, of course, but just the product of someone working with top notch materials that gets all the tiny little details right, letting extreme deep local knowledge and experience guide the kind of intuitive decision making that you need to apply all the time when you are growing vines and making wines. Gonon just gets it right.

These are very limited of course:

Pierre Gonon Ardeche Les Iles Feray 2022 - $82.99

Pierre Gonon Saint Joseph Rouge 2022 - $134.99