2009 Châteauneuf-du-Pape Réserve des Célestins

There won't be a Marie Beurrier bottling from 2009, according to Henri and Marcel Bonneau, which speaks to their high opinion of the vintage. But I wouldn't assume that this will make it any easier to find their Réserve des Célestins, much less make it any cheaper, in spite of it being the lone bottling from '09. These are among the wildest sets of wines that I taste every year, but, as I've noted before, they show a little more polish and upfront fruitiness nowadays than they did in years past.

I hasten to add that this is strictly relative, so fans of the domain shouldn't fear that Bonneau's wines are any less distinctive than before. Less time in barrel can't be the explanation for today's slightly less wild wines, because Bonneau still insists on "bottling the wine when it's ready." Rushing the wines into bottle (which by this domain's regimen would mean less than four years after the harvest) "would mean that maybe they didn't have a chance to grow," as Bonneau put it this year. That was an especially important concern, he added, in years like 2010 and 2005, "where the wines really want to breathe, and not enough time in cask would have made them too clenched."

Bonneau is a big fan of the 2009 vintage, and to make the point of just how well a warm-vintage wine can age Marcel pulled out a bottle of the 1990 Célestins that was simply ethereal, with the energy of a much younger wine from a much cooler vintage. We followed it over the course of an hour and, if anything, it was more youthful when the glasses were emptied than when the cork was pulled.E241

When I asked Henri Bonneau about the ageworthiness of most modern-day Chateauneufs, he commented that "many wines today are bottled much younger than was the tradition when I was learning, with a lot more reduction than before."That gives a lot of primary "obvious" fruit, he said, which is good for people who like to drink their Chateauneuf when it's young."But what about after the wine has been in bottle for a while?Will it have the texture of a wine that slowly took on oxygen during elevage, will it have as much complexity?"That led to talk about the tannic structure of wines that are rushed too quickly into bottle (which means pretty much every red wine in the world, measured by the Bonneau bottling regimen).He said that he likes to bottle and release his wines when he thinks that the fruit and tannins are in harmony, "but not so much that they have to be drunk immediately."As I noted last year, the wines here seem to have acquired more polish than in the past, but that's strictly relative as these are still among the most idiosyncratic wines made in France today.They've always had quirkiness and personality to burn, so long-time fans have no reason for alarm.The 2005 Marie Beurrier, which Bonneau opened after our tasting, is still extremely young but displays very impressive depth, energy and concentrated red fruit character and notes of woodsmoke and minerals.Hands off, please.

Henri Bonneau made it clear to me this year that highly structured and/or overly ripe vintages of Chateauneuf-du-Pape aren't his personal preference "because the complexity and terroir are obscured."In fact, he personally prefers the relatively graceful 2006 Celestins to the far more masculine 2005 bottling, and has some (but not many) misgivings about the tannins of 2010, at least at this stage, believing that they will require plenty of barrel aging to show their best.He used some of his colorful female analogies to make his point about finesse over brawniness, opining that "Chateauneuf should be elegant, after all, not brutal."Bonneau told me that he thinks too many wines are being rushed into bottle these days, to the detriment of their character."Everything is being done with speed in mind now in winemaking, elevage and bottling.People want the quickest solution and lack patience, for almost everything, not just wine, but for all work, and so quality suffers."We tried a bottle of the 2005 Celestins at the end of our tasting and while it is still distinctly young and wound up, its depth of fruit is obvious, as are its tannins.Aeration brought up a sexy floral quality as well as a touch of candied licorice and peppery spices.Readers fortunate enough to get hold of this wine are strongly advised to let it gather dust in their cellar for at least another five years and ideally longer.

Once again I left my annual tasting in Bonneau's Cellar That Time Forgot with the distinct impression that the wines here have become, heaven forbid, less rustic and wild in recent years. Nothing has changed in the cellar, that's for sure, although it is actually a bit more organized than in the past, with the most notable change being actual names and vintages of wines chalked onto barrels and tanks. Beyond that, everything's pretty much in the same time warp as ever. Bonneau seemed amused (he's always pretty amused, in fact) by the idea that I found the wines fruitier and easier to read than in the past. "Maybe that's the vintages but maybe it's just you," he said.

Henri Bonneau joked that he was "an original natural winemaker but I didn't know it until it became a fashion." He was referring to the cultish wave of non-interventionist wines that has swept across France and much of the wine world. "I protect the forests because I don't use any new oak, and my cleaning regimen is water and a brush, with a little sulfur burnt in the casks for safety. That's it." Bonneau noted that 2006 is a very underrated vintage because the wines aren't powerful. "The main point is that they have superb balance," he told me, "which is essential if you want wine to age well." Bonneau works roughly six hectares of vines spread across ten parcels, and his fruit, which is almost all grenache and harvested at ridiculously low yields (around 10 hectoliters per hectare) is not destemmed. As in past years, the names that I have given to each wine noted below are the ones that Bonneau told me they're likely to receive down the road. But there are never any guarantees. For instance, last year he told me he was pretty sure that he wouldn't make a Reserve des Celestins from 2008, but this fall he said that he was still holding out that possibility, hence my two notes for his 2008s this year. I was shocked, in a very good way, by the finesse and clarity of Bonneau's 2008s and 2009s, which showed little to none of the wild, volatile character that can mark these wines in cask.