Walls: A Côte-Rôtie with a Burgundian flourish

Tall and slim, with bright, expressive eyes, Julien Barge has something of the mad scientist about him. His family has lived in the same street in Ampuis for 200 years, but the impression of permanence this offers is illusory. This is a Côte-Rôtie estate in constant evolution.

Julien took over from his father Gilles in 2019, and immediately made significant modifications to the way the estate worked. After converting the estate to organic viticulture in 2018 – still relatively uncommon in Côte-Rôtie – Julien decided to address the rising alcohol levels brought on by a warming climate.

Scroll down for tasting notes and scores for 15 Domaine Barge wines

A novel method

His method is simple but effective – it’s basically a late green harvest.

Green harvesting is when a winemaker cuts off and discards a proportion of the baby bunches from his vines before they’ve fully ripened, around the time they change colour from green to purple. The aim is to concentrate ripening in the bunches that remain.

Yet what Julien has been doing for the past few vintages is slightly different; he waits longer, until just four weeks before picking, to perform a green harvest. Sugars build up as normal during ripening and are shared between bunches.

Some of the partly-ripened bunches are then snipped off and discarded – thereby disposing of some of the sugars that would have ended up in the juice.

In the last four weeks before picking, Julien says that grapes generate sugars more slowly, so when he finally picks the grapes, they have lower potential alcohol – around 12%.

He first tried this method with the 2021 vintage, and since then, ‘it’s become a vision,’ says Julien, ‘something we’re confident in’.

Getting technical – an updated process in the cellar

Barge has made some complementary changes in the cellar to accommodate this new approach. Before 2021, his wines were made using whole bunches, but he’s had to reduce the number of stems he uses to find a new balance, and now uses around 50%.

His ferments are much shorter than they once were, now just 12-18 days. He no longer opts for a cold maceration before fermentation; ‘it’s not interesting, because there’s no life activity,’ he says – in other words, no living organisms like yeast working on the juice.

He ferments with a submerged cap, and doesn’t use temperature control. Then he ages the wines in small foudres – made by the highly-respected Stockinger cooperage – for two years.

An original style

The lower alcohol levels aren’t the only way in which the wines have changed – there is a marked stylistic change here between the richer, riper wines of 2020 and before, and the finer, more delicate Côte-Rôties of 2021 and after.

Though delicious expressions of Côte-Rôtie, the alcohol is perceptible in his 2019 and 2020 Les Côtes. They are rich, velvety and potent.

From 2021 onwards, they are more fragrant, displaying an abundance of herbs and flowers. They are noticeably lighter in alcohol – and therefore body – with stricter acidity and less fruit sweetness.

Julien has stepped back from the increasingly ripe, powerful Côte-Rôties that have proliferated since 2015 – and you really feel the difference. ‘It’s a risk,’ he says. ‘When I believe in something, I just do it.’

These taste like Côte-Rôties from an earlier era; savoury and ethereal, somewhere between Burgundy’s Morey-St-Denis and Côte-Rôtie. When matching with food, it might be better to think about what works with Pinot Noir rather than Syrah.

History of invention

Julien isn’t the first Barge to affect change in Côte-Rôtie. One of his forefathers, Pierre Barge, was one of the founding members of the popular Marché aux Vins d’Ampuis wine fair that still runs today.

The family first started bottling its wines as far back as 1929. His father Gilles even installed a mini rack railway in one of their steeper vineyards to help bring the grapes in at harvest.

So it’s no surprise to see this estate continuing to evolve and innovate in the face of climate change.

This new direction has produced elegant and complex wines, but with less concentration, alcohol and richness. These are all elements that can help sustain a wine over time. So some uncertainty remains over the longevity of these new wines.

Julien’s Les Côtes 2021 is particularly lean – but it was a difficult, frosted vintage for everyone. In Les Côtes 2022, the technique feels more mastered. As alcohol levels continue to rise in the region, the eyes of an appellation will be watching to see where this experiment takes him.

Domaine Barge wines to try

Wines are listed by vintage youngest to oldest

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