Walls: Exploring the wines of L’Euthymie De Sophie

Upon completing her PhD in Risk Management, Sophie Clusel gave up a steady job to dedicate herself to a single hectare of vines in Côte-Rôtie. Now I’m not sure what they teach in the curriculum these days, but it doesn’t strike me as an entirely risk-free decision. But there are several things that are unusual about this new estate.

Scroll down to see tasting notes and scores for nine L’Euthymie De Sophie wines

The winemaking community of Côte-Rôtie can feel quite conservative, so it’s refreshing to be greeted by a woman with multiple piercings and a top-knot. ‘I’m not a real domaine,’ she was quick to claim, as in fact she owns just less than 1ha of vines (0.8567ha to be precise!) But I prefer to measure a domaine in terms of quality rather than size. And thankfully her brilliant wines are very real indeed.

Another intriguing element is the name. ‘Euthymia’ (not to be confused with any 80s synth-pop bands) means an internal state of tranquillity and psychological well-being. In a region whose estates almost always take the surname of the owner, it’s a bold break from tradition.

It was her grandfather who originally bought some vines. He passed them down to Sophie’s father, an artisan metalworker, who cultivated them in his spare time. He also bought some further prime parcels, back when vineyards in Côte-Rôtie were available and affordable; ‘another time, another world,’ said Sophie.

Winemaking was a part-time project for Sophie too when she took on the family vineyards. ‘You don’t know how it all works simply because you’re born into it,’ she said, so on top of a high-pressure job and finishing her PhD, she also completed her winemaking qualifications. I can only assume her state of mind during this intense period was anything but euthymic.

She started small. Her first vintage was 2015, and she made just 700 bottles, selling the rest in bulk. With samples in her hand, she walked around local towns and villages ‘as excited as a flea’ selling her wine to shops and restaurants, relying on word of mouth to promote them.

As the years have passed, the proportion of wine in bottle has increased. Her 2020 vintage will be the first to be sold entirely under glass, topping out at a modest 5,000 bottles, most of which she still sells locally.

By 2018 she was ready to give up her day job and concentrate on her passion. Her plantings are limited, but her parcels are enviable: Côte Blonde, Côte Brune, La Landonne, Rozier, Collet, Tupin. She now makes two Côte-Rôties: a cuvée classique and a single vineyard ‘La Landonne’.

She still hadn’t bottled her 2019s when I visited in the spring of 2023 – she’s aiming for four years in barrel. ‘If you wait a bit longer, the wines are much more approachable,’ she said. It’s unlikely she’ll wait quite so long to bottle the lighter 2021s though; ‘it’s the vintage that decides.’

The 2019s are around 30% destemmed, and her 2020s are entirely whole-bunch fermented. Extraction is gentle, and she favours the traditional submerged cap method rather than more energetic methods.

Her 2015 cuvée classique was highly competent if not necessarily a wine to seek out; a good first attempt. The progress she has made from there is remarkable, making leaps in quality with each passing vintage.

‘I work the same soils the Romans worked – and these vineyards were already famous when they arrived,’ said Sophie. With this kind of a track record, perhaps changing careers wasn’t such a big risk after all.

Unless her winemaking skills were imperfect of course. But if her 2019s and 2020s fulfil the promise they show in barrel, then Sophie clearly has considerable talent. It’s not just Sophie that enjoys some tranquility from tending her vines; I can happily report great psychological well-being from drinking them.

Matt Walls tastes and rates nine L’Euthymie De Sophie wines