For all our love of Syrah, the northern Rhône went unrepresented in our portfolio until Hélène and Jean-Pierre Mucyn came to us through Jean-Marc Espinasse of Rouge-Bleu. The couple left careers and a home in Champagne, retrained in Beaune, and in 2001 planted new roots on the banks of the Rhône, settling into an 18th-century boatmen's lodge in Hermitage whose stables once housed eighty horses. Their fourteen hectares lie scattered like an archipelago across Crozes-Hermitage, Saint-Joseph, and Cornas. Hélène works the vines, Jean-Pierre makes the wine, and by their own account neither does anything without the other. The wines are stylish and unexaggerated, and they have quietly won a European following that has yet to become common knowledge on this side of the Atlantic.