Découvertes en Vallée du Rhône is a wine fair created by Inter Rhône in March 2001; this year was the seventh edition of this prestigious event.

Over 2000 wine trade professionals attended the four day event March 11-14:  two days of tasting at Palais des Papes in Avignon for the Grenache-based wines from the Southern Rhône, and two days in Tain-l’Hermitage and Ampuis for the Syrah and Viognier wines of the Northern Rhône Valley.

Our ABC Wine Team was present. This type of event helps us to learn the specifics of the new vintages, understand and follow hot trends, discover new emerging (quality-wise) domains, find the
highest quality wines and negotiate the best deals.

This time was no exception. After sampling through hundreds of wines, we retained a few jewels that will be showing on the shelves at your favorite ABC store in the very near future, including a stunning organic Châteauneuf du Pape and several other wines in different Côtes du Rhône appellations.

In fact, the big surprise for me this year at Découvertes was the growing number of Certified Organic and Biodynamic wine domains. Many of these estates were farmed without the use of pesticides, herbicides and artificial fertilizers for many years but only now getting certified organic. Many of their neighbors are following in their footsteps and are in the process of organic conversion, a process that lasts three years before certification.

Another trend was the increasing quality of the white wines of the Southern Rhône. Certainly the quality of the wines from the Rhône Valley is higher than ever, and the prices, for the most part (especially for
Grenache), have not changed much in the past few years making these wines great bargains and top priority on my personal shopping list.

Specifics to come in future blogs and on Twitter.

Atanas Nechkov, ABC Wine Supervisor

Follow me on Twitter @abcwineatanas