2016 E. Guigal La Landonne Côte-Rôtie 750 ml

There are the top Rhône producers, and then there’s E. Guigal, whose mythical, single-vineyard, small production “La-La” reds—La Landonne, La Mouline, and La Turque—have garnered 30 perfect 100-point reviews from Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate. That’s more than Château Petrus, Lafite-Rothschild, Haut-Brion, Mouton-Rothschild, and Margaux. 

Combined.

As Parker himself put it, “No one does it better; no one has done it longer; and no one seems to have the Midas touch” quite like Guigal.

La Landonne, planted in the 1970s, is situated on one of the steepest vineyards of the Côte Brune, a steep slope that requires harvesters to start picking from the bottom of the vineyard and work their way up, utilizing sleds that drag the bins up the hill. It is typically the last of the LaLas to be harvested and puts forth a wine with full power and dark, brooding fruit.

Founded in 1946, E. Guigal crafts arguably the most cherished and critically acclaimed wines in the Rhône Valley—reds and whites from the vertiginous slopes of the Côte Rotie that enthrall all five senses from the first pour, and are built to delight in the cellar for decades.

The most famous wines in the Guigal domaine are known as the Trésors, or “Treasures”: The small-production La Mouline, La Landonne, and La Turque bottlings from Côte-Rôtie are bucket-list wines, exquisite expressions of the Northern Rhône that are coveted by collectors  and can cost more than a car payment. Fortunately, all of their wines do not share the same price tag—but do share the same DNA.