2010 Châteauneuf-du-Pape A la Gloire de Mon Grand-Père

Nicolas Boirin deserves a lot of credit for making Bosquet des Papes one of the most improved estates in Chateauneuf in the last decade, a point made very clear with the 2010 vintage.There are normally three wines made here: a "classic" Chateauneuf that is aged in foudres and demi-muids, the A la Gloire de mon Grand-Pere, which is almost all grenache and aged in concrete and large older oak and the Chante le Merle Vieilles Vignes, which is made from a blend similar to the classic bottling (about 80% grenache, with syrah and mourvedre and a bit of cinsault) but feremented with up to 100% whole clusters.There is a single bottling of Chateauneuf from 2011 because "the vintage just didn't give the necessary quality to justify the special bottlings" Boiron told me.He recommends drinking the '11 while you wait on the '10s, '09s and '07s and maybe even the '05s.His '10s, which are the best set of wines I have ever tasted here, deserve a lot of patience, "especially now that they are closing up," Nicolas said.He added that while it was possible to discern their fruit up until a few months ago, "it's foolish and a waste of wine to try to see anything but structure in the wines right now."

"We like to think that we have three different personalities here," said Nicolas Boiron. "One makes the classique wine, which is balanced, accessible and typical Chateauneuf; another makes the Chante Le Merle, which gets as much whole clusters as possible [100% in 2010, by the way] and is meant to show maximum personality and perfume; and the third is for the Gloire de Mon Grand-Pere, which is the wine that is built for maximum structure and aging." Boiron, whose first vintage on his own was 2004, admits that his early efforts "were maybe too extracted and valued structure over elegance a bit much." He told me he's now looking for intensity with harmonious tannins and as much freshness as possible. With that in mind he calls 2010 "a dream year if you like energy and balance. The wines will age really well, too."