Clairette

Clairette is one of the oldest white varieties of southern France and was once among the most planted, though it has retreated considerably in the face of more fashionable grapes.

It gives a full-bodied, low-acid wine with apple, fennel, white flowers and a distinctly bitter, almost herbal finish. Alcohol runs high, and the grape oxidises very readily, which historically was its great problem: without modern temperature control and protective handling, Clairette turned flat and maderised within a year, and a great deal of it was made into vermouth or distilled for exactly that reason.

Cool fermentation and reductive winemaking have changed this entirely, and it is now capable of producing fresh, textured, genuinely interesting dry whites.

It is a permitted variety in Châteauneuf-du-Pape and appears in white blends across the southern Rhône and Languedoc, usually alongside Grenache Blanc, Bourboulenc and Roussanne, where its body and herbal character are valued.

Two appellations are built on it. Clairette du Languedoc makes dry and occasionally sweet still wines. Clairette de Die, in the Drôme, makes a sparkling wine by the méthode ancestrale — bottled before fermentation completes — though there the blend is dominated by Muscat and Clairette is the minority partner, which is an oddity given the name.

South Africa grows a little as Clairette Blanche, and it is planted in Israel and Sardinia.