For special occasions, fine dining, and cellar collectors, The Northern Icons collection represents the absolute pinnacle of luxury in French winemaking. This dedicated tier brings together the three legendary, heavyweight appellations of the upper valley—Côte-Rôtie, Hermitage, and Cornas—where tiny, historic vineyard plots cling to impossibly steep, south-facing granitic cliffs that bake in the intense afternoon sunshine. Farming these dizzying terraces requires back-breaking hand-labour, but the reward is an unparalleled concentration of complex flavour that has made these wines highly sought-after benchmarks across the globe.
While all three regions are anchored by the ink-black Syrah grape, they offer completely contrasting personalities for the discerning palate. In Côte-Rôtie, the powerful red grape is traditionally co-fermented with a tiny splash of the white Viognier grape, creating an incredibly silky texture and adding an enticing, fragrant lift of spring flowers to the dark bramble fruit. Across the river on the iconic hill of Hermitage, the wines are built for decades of cellaring, delivering a masculine, majestic, and deeply structured profile packed with rich plums and savoury depth. Meanwhile, the sun-baked amphitheatre of Cornas demands that Syrah be used exclusively, resulting in an unyielding, wonderfully rustic, and intensely dark red wine. Bursting with signature regional notes of smoky bacon, green olive, and cracked black pepper, this premium collection showcases the ultimate expression of precision and power the ancient river valley can produce.