Special Offer Price - $39.95 per bottle with code CDPSTEAL
The stylistic space separating modern, top-heavy CDP and the region’s traditional examples is larger than this same divide elsewhere. Whereas in Burgundy, for example, late-picked and heavily oaked wines differ by degree and extent from more restrained styles, in CDP the modern/traditional divide feels so large that pragmatically the difference becomes one of kind rather than extent.
Châteauneuf’s arch-traditionalists center upon Clos des Papes, Le Vieux Donjon, and most famously Henri Bonneau (one is tempted to include Rayas though as a product of terroir exceptionalism that wine marks a somewhat different phenomenon). To this trio I’ll add Clos des Brusquières. The domaine produces, now as always, a single cuvée from their oldest vines and an impressively varied pull of soils.
The nose of hickory smoke, sun-on-rocks, and kirsch liqueur evoke the CDP archetype Henri Bonneau so ably developed across his half-century career. And, again channeling Bonneau, density rather than size is the point. Impact and weight are unrelated, we’re reminded.
80% Grenache (tank) with the remainder Syrah and Mourvèdre (demi-muid). No de-stemming, ‘unless we have to.’
Cheers,
Jason
