Trollat Raymond is the label used by Raymond Trollat, one of the Northern Rhone Valley’s most remarkable producers. Trollat is the éminence grise and widely acknowledged great artist of Saint-Joseph. Until his retirement in 2005, he had spent his entire life working a 5.4 acre, old-vine estate that as a young man he worked with his father. Trollat, a beloved figure who still dispenses viticultural advice to his younger neighbors, is as legendary as his wines. Wine writers and Rhone wine collectors over the decades have lauded Trollat’s wines for their incomparable earthiness and style. Robert M. Parker Jr. wrote in the late 1990s that Trollat “produces intense, concentrated, muscular wines that require time in the bottle.” The New York Times noted more recently that Trollat’s wines represent a style that “that embodies the history of Saint-Joseph” and speaks “in a far broader vocabulary than simply fruit and oak.” Trollat typically produced only about 1,000 cases of red St. Joseph annually, along with 100 cases of Marsanne. Having no heir, he sold his vineyards when he retired. Nevertheless, his wines, now extremely rare, live on as a testament to singular winemaking.