Producers in the southern Rhône Valley are dialing back the jammy flavors in this red wine, which veered for so long into fruit-bomb territory.
Of the many wonderful transformations that have characterized the last decade in wine, perhaps the most heartening has been the stylistic swing back toward balance and nuance.
This shift comes after a long period in which exaggerated red wine ruled. Ultraripe, jammy fruit bombs — lacking freshness and structure (other than the tannins contributed by new oak barrels) — seemed for too long to epitomize what powerful critics sought and what many producers were all too willing to provide.
These overblown wines surged to become prominent in many different regions, but none more so than Châteauneuf-du-Pape, in the southern Rhône Valley of France.
Châteauneuf has always been a big, powerful, rough-hewed wine, capable of majesty yet always a bit tattered. As I was learning about wine in the 1980s, I drank a lot of Châteauneuf, which back then was a more affordable great wine than Bordeaux or Burgundy.
I loved its intensity and its complexity. The leathery fruit and distinctive savory flavors were rustic in the best sense of the word, conjuring up the fragrant wild herbs known as garrigue in Provence and southern France. Years later, on the rare occasion when I drank a Châteauneuf from the ’80s, they all seemed etched with this aromatic badge of place.
Somewhere along the way, many Châteauneufs lost that rustic appeal. In the late 1990s, many producers began to pursue a lusher, glossier, more oaky style — just another modern, polished red, though denser and stronger than many, often at 15 to 16 percent alcohol.
Some critics loved this evolution, and the wines became more expensive. But while the region gained newfound popularity and wealth, the wine lost something, like a magnificent ramshackle manse transformed into a McMansion, luxurious but no longer Mediterranean.
This style reached a peak, perhaps, with the 2007 vintage, which some critics called historic. Our wine panel review of the ’07 Châteauneufs told a different story.
“I’ve never had a vintage like this, so lacking in structure and tannins, and with so much ripe fruit at the expense of minerality and earthiness,” one panelist said, though he added that he thought the wines would be popular.
Yet with so many regions now finding a new balance, with a greater diversity of styles to please more tastes, I have wondered whether Châteauneuf producers, too, reconsidered their path. Like 2007, the 2016 vintage has been hailed as a great vintage in Châteauneuf. I thought it might be a good time to revisit the wines.
One recent January afternoon, the panel tasted 20 bottles of Châteauneuf-du-Pape, all from the 2016 vintage. For the tasting, Florence Fabricant and I were joined by Sabra Lewis, wine director at the Standard Grill in the meatpacking district, and Edouard Bourgeois, wine director at Pressoir.wine, which organizes events and offers consulting.
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