Joli Vin imports

Emmanuel Darnaud - Crozes-Hermitage

A young man with a bright future, Emmanuel Darnaud is well on the road toward making a strong name for himself as one of the most talented young winemakers to emerge from the appellation in the last handful of years, as acknowledged by leading Rhone Valley wine guru John Livingstone-Learmonth and certainly by anyone who has tasted his remarkable wines. His wine making education came at the foot of the best, noted Hermitage producer Bernard Faurie, where Emmanuel spent 4 years.

Emmanuel gives appreciation to the notion that while great wines have their start in the vineyard through attentive and meticulous vineyard practices, they only become great through a delicate transformation that takes place in the cellar and is measured by the skill and sensitivity of the winemaker. This transformation does not come without great physical commitment, such as subjecting all of his fruit to a near deep freeze before it goes into the fermentation tanks for an extended cold pre-fermentation or the rigor of up to three foot-crushings a day in each of his 6 fermentation tanks during the approximate three week fermentations.

Since his first vintage in 2001, Darnaud has emerged as a maker of brightly fruited wines with a smoky, seductive and haunting bouquet that clearly sets him in a class apart from his contemporaries. With the recent addition to his holdings of several well-chosen, aged vineyards in the Crozes appellation, there will be a modest increase of wine available from this exceptionally talented young winemaker in the years to come and this can only serve to satisfy the growing demand from those who have already discovered the profound seduction within each bottle bearing his name that they’ve encountered.