The weightier half of the northern Rhône's white duo: Marsanne gives body, oiliness and a nutty richness, and needs the leaner Roussanne beside it for lift. It is the backbone of white Hermitage and Crozes — wines that can age for decades into honey and toasted almond — and, by a long detour, the traditional white grape of Australia's Goulburn Valley, home to some of the oldest Marsanne vines in the world.
Low in acid and easily flattened by heat or over-cropping, it rewards cool slopes and restraint. At its best it is broad and lanolin-smooth in youth, then slowly gathers the waxy, mineral depth that makes old white Hermitage one of the Rhône's quiet legends.