It wasn’t so long ago – no more than two decades – that the primary role of the muscular, potent wines of the sunny Rhône Valley was to beef up, illegally if quite openly, the anemic product of its northern neighbor, Burgundy, especially in cooler vintages when the latter had trouble ripening.

Not any more. Such practices are a thing of the past because these days wines from this picturesque part of France have come into their own, attaining world-wide popularity for their rustic authenticity and reasonable prices. And no wine encapsulates these too appealing virtues in one bottle better than Guigal’s Côtes du Rhône Rouge 2006 ($15).

Guigal produces 2 million bottles of this wine each year, and this makes their success even more remarkable.

Philippe Guigal

It’s not too difficult to make a few thousand bottles of a remarkable wine. Far, far harder, though to is source fruit from 75 different growers, and ensure they all deliver top class grapes to the right place and right time – and that no one’s slipping in bunches from that inferior vineyard you eliminated from the contract last year because of that spot of bother. Then to make a wine of this quality, age it for two years, bottle it, ship it to the US, pay duty, distribution costs, wholesaler and retailer markup, and still sell it for $15 is not only extraordinary, it’s an act of winemaking genius.

The wine itself is a blend of syrah, which brings weight and spice to the show, grenache, which brings a fresh fruitiness; and mourvèdre, which brings a silky elegance. Here all three work seamlessly and gloriously together, resulting in a rich and earthy wine of huge seductive appeal.