Dard & Ribo Crozes-Hermitage Rouge C'est le Printemps 2025

Dard & Ribo are among the foundational producers of the natural wine movement in the Northern Rhône. René Jean Dard and François Ribo met while studying at the wine school in Beaune and established their domaine in the early 1980s, initially working with just a hectare of family vines. Today they farm roughly 9 hectares across Crozes Hermitage, Saint Joseph and Hermitage, with the estate remaining deliberately small and hands on. Their philosophy has always been to let Syrah speak clearly rather than making the powerful, heavily extracted style traditionally associated with the Northern Rhône.

The vineyards are farmed organically, with biodynamic practices also employed, although sources differ on whether the estate currently holds formal organic certification. Dard & Ribo were working their soils and avoiding herbicides decades before organic and natural wine became fashionable. Their Crozes Hermitage vineyards around Mercurol include sandy and clay soils with rounded Rhône river stones, while the northern parts of the appellation have more granite and granite derived soils.

C’est le Printemps is their intentionally early drinking expression of Crozes Hermitage, made from Syrah and designed to emphasize freshness, fruit and drinkability rather than structure. The 2025 comes from the earlier picked Syrah and is made with native yeasts, gentle extraction and a relatively short maceration. As with the domaine’s other reds, whole clusters are important to the style, bringing aromatic lift and freshness without trying to build a massive tannic wine.

In the cellar, Dard & Ribo follow a distinctly low intervention approach: old wood rather than new oak, no fining or filtration, and little to no added sulfur depending on the wine and vintage. C’est le Printemps is the lighter, more immediate counterpart to their longer lived parcel wines, with the 2025 showing the characteristic combination of bright red fruit, peppery Syrah character, freshness and a juicy, almost weightless texture. It is a particularly good introduction to why Dard & Ribo have become such cult figures among Northern Rhône natural wine producers.