1996 Chateauneuf-du-Pape

Henri Bonneau was in fine form the evening I stopped by in November, having recently completed his fourth consecutive highly successful vintage. Vintages 2000, '99 and '98 will all yield at least moderate quantities of Bonneau's Reserve des Celestins, but don't expect to see these wines on the market for several years. Bonneau's house and cellars at the top of the village of Chateauneuf du Pape date back to the 14th century; his barrels are of somewhat more recent vintage.

Bonneau, always a brutally honest judge of his own wines and Chateauneuf vintages, has had a trio of strong crops since '98. He is enamored of the purity of fruit his vines yielded in 2000, although he not yet sure if the wines will show enough sheer gras for greatness. The '99s, he says, are less dense, but display good freshness and structure for aging. And '98, Bonneau is confident, is at the exalted level of 1990, although he won't even think about bottling the first batch for at least another three years (some of his '98 lots were just finished fermenting their sugars!). An enologist turned loose in this rabbit warren of a cellar would have an infarction: he'd rant about protecting pHs, replacing ancient barrels, racking the wines more often, bottling as much as years earlier. Some of these wines would no doubt be better for earlier bottling, but the wine world would lose one of its most idiosyncratic throwback examples.

Bonneau, who vinified his first vintage in 1956, takes the long view when assessing vintages. When I mentioned to him that I thought 1995 was a pretty good year for the appellation, he responded, "Yes, it's very good but it's not a vintage we'll be talking about in 30 years." On the other hand, Bonneau's young '98, from a superb vintage for the wines of the region, may indeed have a life span that long. "Classic grenache in surmaturite with a taste of the grape," is the way Bonneau describes his '98. Yields were just 25 hectoliters per hectare, about average for this domain. Today's plants tend to produce too much, notes Bonneau. "Today's pepinieristes (i.e, nurserymen who supply vines to grape growers) don't love wine; they drink water." x000D x000D x000D x000D Although Bonneau does not decide how he's going to label his various cuvees and vintages until the very last moment, he admitted to me that he has a pretty good idea how a given batch of fruit is going to turn out when he harvests the grapes. In recent months, Bonneau has released some '93 as well as some '92 Marie Beurrier and Reserve des Celestins (see notes on these wines in Issue 82); in November the '92 Marie Beurrier was showing very well while the more substantial, even riper, more port-like Celestins (15.2% alcohol) was far less forthcoming. Both of these '92s are superb for the vintage.

My annual odyssey through Henri Bonneau maze of cellars began with an early look at the 1998 vintage, which will surely be this Chateauneuf master's greatest year since 1990. The several '98 cuvees I tasted, none of which had finished fermenting their considerable sugars, showed the roasted, confectionery fruit and unctuous, liqueur-like texture that Bonneau and his devoted clients so admire. The black raspberry, kirsch and bitter chocolate notes displayed by the young '98s are unusually vibrant for a vintage that will eventually be bottled with off-the-charts alcohol levels, and the tannic clout of the vintage should see these wines through their long elevage. Although Bonneau often waits as long as five or six years to bottle his Chateauneuf, he noted that the wines are usually racked just once a year, in February and March. At any point in the process, wines not up to Bonneau's standards may be sold off to the negoces