EMMANUEL REYNAUD: A PERSONAL APPRECIATION
DECEMBER 2025
In the autumn of 2021, during my annual visit and supper with Emmanuel Reynaud and his wife Claude, Emmanuel casually asked me what year I was born in. I told him 1950, and thought no more about it.
One year later, I had tasted the 2021s from Château Rayas and Château de Fonsalette as usual. As I walked into the house for a bite to eat, Emmanuel explained that he had managed to procure a bottle of Rayas 1952 red - “the nearest vintage I could find to your year of birth”.
It turned out that he negotiated two bottles of this now 70 year old vintage from a French gentleman, a fan of Rayas, who had bought three bottles in recent times. After his approach, Emmanuel had blended 80% of one of the bottles with 20% of another in July 2022, with the proviso that he would drink one with the seller if he could retain the other for his own enjoyment and inspection. The bumbling companion for this second venture was me. It was a thoughtful act of great kindness, a wine made by his grandfather Louis, whom I had known for five years before his death in 1978. Louis it was who served me blind a 1962 red on 20 November, 1974 - “finesse and harmony hand in hand, airs of violets,” I wrote at the time, thinking it was a 1959.
A man with great respect for the history and tradition of the estate, Emmanuel proceeded to analyse the wine with care. He put before it a dish of gravad lax salmon, an unlikely companion indeed, but his reasoning ran as follows: “I am not sure whether to drink it with fish or alone. It is gras, since it handles the raw salmon. It could be Grenache-Clairette, its freshness indicating Clairette, while I consider it to have been a year of very little colour. The apple tart [for dessert] brings out the acidity in it. You always taste something in the old wines of Rayas. You drink a lot of old bottles en hommage, not with pleasure, but this bottle offers hommage, and also pleasure. It makes for an unusual (hors commun) aperitif” – something of an understatement!
Emmanuel followed this with a 2001, designed to show affinity with the 1952 – a bottle that had lost a little wine – “so we are able to drink it earlier, hence it is richer and more rapid to show itself. It’s gaining in richness as it ages.” He added: “I find 1952 in the 2001 – quince fruits, acidity, velvet texture.”
Emmanuel was never happier than when appreciating fully matured wines from Rayas. In the early 2020s he decided to release the wines of Rayas later than previously, at least 10 years’ old. He told me: “it’s 10 years minimum for when Rayas starts to parler (speak), and ideally another 10 years are needed. If you wait 40 to 50 years, the vintage effect is taken over by the terroir, providing you have done your work well. For restaurants, I can now propose 15-20 year old wines. Rayas is so much the object of speculation, so I am keeping it. I want people to buy it and hide it and serve it to the passionate. Burgundy now is a trophy drink for people who don’t understand wine.”
A private, guarded man, Emmanuel had immense drive. I was always left wondering how he managed to successfully steer the fortunes of his three properties, Château Rayas, Château de Fonsalette and Château des Tours. All produced wines that bore the hallmarks of the Reynaud family – discretion, wistful elegance based on mature Grenache noir vineyards left to ripen long after their neighbours’ vines.
The 2019 harvest, for example, ended on 31 October. Emmanuel termed it “a very Grande Année, full, with balance in the fruit, spices, a lot of freshness. I find spices often come in a year ending in nine. Degree was a little down on 2017 at 15°-15.5°. We waited for the rain, which is why the harvest only ended on 31 October. The rain came, so we have a good combination of ripe fruits from the high growing season, with small tart fruits of the late season” – that last declaration a summary of his capture of complexity in his wines.
Colours were never pronounced, a light sprinkling of spice, pepper, and a serenity that implied rather than declared. There was also great work with the Cinsault, notably at Fonsalette, along with its fabled Syrah – a quite remarkable Côtes du Rhône of great pedigree, all wines immensely long-lived. The Fonsalette 1978 is rightly fabled among wine lovers of my generation, the last bottle of which I drank in reverence with the late Steven Spurrier in the 2010s.
Supported all the way by his gentle, grounded wife Claude, a doctor’s daughter from Bourg-Argental on the road up to the Col de la Républigue between the Rhône and Saint-Etienne, a large family was raised, one with a natural manner and a characteristic respect for those they met. Tales of the daughters’ adventures would emerge as we chatted - Agathe had undertaken an over 3,000 km cycle from Brittany to St Jean de Pied Port in the Basque country along the pilgrim route, while Anne-Claire had taken two months to walk from Le Puy to Santiago de Compostela, another favourite pilgrim journey.
Son Benoît went to live at the Château des Tours near Sarrians, home of their Vacqueyras, under the guidance of the family’s vastly experienced Moroccan manager. “He’s more likely to listen to him than to me,” stated Emmanuel. Louis-Damien lives at the remarkable Château de Fonsalette. Both are now parents, which brought joy and fulfilment to Emmanuel and Claude.
I cast my mind back to the days when Louis Reynaud would softly murmur to me, “ah oui, Monsieur Livingstone, il y a des jolies choses dans la vie” as I nearly fell to my knees in awe of the 1955 liquoreux white. Then on to the pretty wildly eccentric uncle Jacques and his busy, twinkling eyed sister Françoise, the Rayas magic preserved by them in ways partly only known to them. When Emmanuel took over in the late 1997, the estate was less organised than it is today, the wines a mite more unstable, and less purely silken.
With so many spinning plates, it took Emmanuel a little time to secure the fortunes of all three properties, the 2000 Rayas being a wine I found “not a grandiose Rayas, as if Emmanuel is feeling his way, a wine that lacks the usual box of tricks or mystery, some depth also.” But soon after that he was well into his stride, the 2001 handsome, mysterious and finely tuned. From then until now, Rayas has lived up to its standing as one of the world’s greats, linking enthusiasts across continents. Today, the pennant flies high above this spiritual place with its garden-like plots and timelessness.
Emmanuel’s legacy is immense, lasting, triumphant. He left us much too soon, fewer than 30 vintages tucked under his belt, but his family can be proud and admiring of his work, while we, the wine lovers, can praise his excellence. Salut for the final time, cher Emmanuel.