Châteauneuf-du-Pape Red Rhone Blend

Really ripe and don’t think it will ever settle down. Cranberry sauce, plums, and olives. It’s too fruit forward and little hot for me, but not bad with food.

Ripe vintage really shows here. The fruit is tasty, but it was lacking other characteristics that you hope for from chtnf. Not overly hot, mild acidity, and showing no oak. Maybe with a few more years that fruit will settle down and show some secondary notes.

Glowing garnet in color. Medium body. New world fruit forward style. Plum compote, cherry and fig up front with tobacco, licorice and iron running through the mid palette. Tight, earl gray like tannins with a medium grippy finish.

Warmed up after an hour and tasted great. Great year with lasting fruit.

This wine was very smooth. Got better as it warmed up. Wonderful ripe berry taste. At least a 92

Blackberries and dark cherries spice box and olives. Hot though. 15%abv

Smooth and balanced and lovely with red fruits and a rich, no nonsense finish. Lavender and wet stone with a little mahogany dust. Lacked the clear strength of midpalate I typically die for in the CNdP, hence the B+ rating.

Maybe too fruit forward for some hardcore Old World wine drinkers, but I'm a sucker for a bold CDP. This one is drinking perfectly right now - just lush notes of blackberry and currants with nice woody herbs on the back end. I could down 5 bottles in a row. 94 pts.

Richard had this 7 years ago

Jim had this 8 years ago