Calvet, Châteauneuf-du-Pape, 2020, Southern Rhone, France
It’s hard to get a bad Châteauneuf-du-Pape and this one from Calvet is no exception. This good aromas and flavours of black fruits, oak, vanilla, with notes of licorice and coffee. At £10 a bottle it’s a good and well worth trying. Sure there are better ones but at £10 is very good value.
Chateauneuf de pape is one of those classic red wines from the rhone valley France it’s a safe bet if you just don’t know what red wine to buy
Walking with decent hangings and buying dried and yet there are some soft this to it probably best for food it was a mistake as to source that sort of thing but there’s every some amount going on you do get earthy and leather notes with tobacco, vanilla from the Shiraz and plum, black fruits from the grenache.
It’s a nice wine I can’t say it’s the best but I did enjoy it. The biggest problem I have is with the price at around £35 a bottle there’s just better stuff out there. Think of this as the ultra high-end Porsche, do you really get much more than a normal Porsche?
E. Guigal, Chateauneuf du Pape, 2011 France
General the rule of Chateauneuf du Pape is that you spend a lot more than usual to get a good one and £18 a bottle for this Hugues Valrasque one is not quite enough. Its decent but what if you spent another £5 or £7, could you get a better one? probably.
Very dry, bold and reasonable smooth with a chuck of red and black fruits, cherry (lots of cherry on the nose), blackberry, fig, spice with an earthy, oaky undertone. The issue I have is that’s a little unbalanced and not quite “there”. It fails to elevate itself to a great Rhone red, decent but spend more.
Hugues Valrasque, Chateauneuf du Pape, 2017, Rhone Valley, France
From one of the most respected Rhone families and before the winery became part of Skalli Family Wines, this is 34 years old french perfection. Well it was 34 years old before we drank it. Was is perfect in today’s world of wine?
Its 34 years old and wine at this age is not like the stuff you get in the supermarket or wine merchant. It needs to wake up, to open up and to be slipped, not gulped. The last bit was a challenge to me! There’s delicate aroma’s of redcurrant, oak and light spice notes. These follow in the taste, but you smell and taste these once its been left opened for about an hour, esp the spice notes. Tannins, what tannins. Silky smooth hints are found but I felt joy when sipping this wine. I don’t like heavy tanniny wines, this is such delight to drink.
This probably should have been drunk a bit earlier but its held up very, very well and I think every wine drinker should have the chance to taste older wines and appreciate the changes they go through and what a powerful wine turns into.
These older wines are not cheap and the cheaper Chateauneuf du Pape wines don’t really age well, spend £30+ on a younger wine and leave it somewhere cool and dark for 15 or 20 years to do its thing, in our case, a wine merchant to a wine fridge.
Henry Bouachon, Chateauneuf du Pape 1985, France