Roussanne is the aromatic, nervy foil to Marsanne's breadth — a difficult, low-yielding, disease-prone grape that growers keep for one reason: perfume. It scents the northern Rhône whites with pear, herbal tea and honeysuckle, and in the south it is one of the thirteen permitted grapes of Châteauneuf-du-Pape, where a splash lifts the white blend.
Its capriciousness nearly cost it its place — plantings dwindled under phylloxera and mildew — but the revival of serious Rhône whites has brought it back. Alone or with Marsanne, it makes wines that are tight and floral young and, given time, gain a remarkable mineral and honeyed complexity.