2011 Châteauneuf-du-Pape Cuvée Tradition

Nicolas Boiron says that he finds most of the 2011s to have "a little sweetness and easy tannins, which makes them easy to drink now."His shorthand take on the most recent vintages is to go ahead and drink the '11s now and over the next few years."But absolutely wait on your '10s and also the '12s, which are acting more and more like the '10s as they age."While he believes that his own 2010s are the best wines he has ever made, he cautions that "they're really shut down and all structure and bones at this point.Anybody who drinks them now and expects to get pleasure is going to be disappointed."

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."