Châteauneuf-du-Pape Blanc: Moving Out of the Shadows

BY JOSH RAYNOLDS | JUNE 8, 2017

With the 2015 vintage, Châteauneuf-du-Pape stakes its claim as one of the Rhône Valley’s top growing regions for white wines. The better examples are now equal in quality to many of their highly esteemed and generally better-known northern Rhône cousins, even Hermitage and Condrieu. Unfortunately, there’s not much wine to go around.

As I have noted in recent years, the overall standard for Châteauneuf-du-Pape blanc has risen steadily over the past decade. In 2015 the region produced more outstanding white wines than from any other vintage in my memory. The best examples display the depth that one would expect from a long, very warm, disease-free growing season, but they generally show real energy and clarity, even finesse, as well. I am confident that a number of these wines will reward patience, which was seldom the case with southern Rhône white wines of the last generation, and yet I’m sure that virtually all of these new bottlings will be drunk up over the next few years. Unless I am missing something, there aren’t many collectors of Rhône white wines, period, so properly aged versions of Châteauneuf blanc, especially, are mostly rare birds that are occasionally spotted in a handful of producers’ cellars.

Modernization and