2011 Châteauneuf-du-Pape

"It's been a good thing that we're so obsessed with mourvedre because relying on grenache for the last few years has been a real pain for people," Marc Perrin told me when we sat down to taste the new Beaucastel releases in November. He noted that underripe grapes were a serious problem in 2011, so fastidious sorting was mandatory. "Now I know how zinfandel growers must feel about having to deal with irregular ripeness within individual clusters," he added. Needless to say, yields were down sharply in '11 (50% less than in 2010 here) but the resulting wines show very good depth and flavor intensity. As for 2012, Perrin calls it "a vintage of balance and fruit intensity, such that the wines can be drunk young, but they will also age because there aren't hard tannins that need time to fade into the background."

According to Marc Perrin, "2011 was especially hard on the grenache in Chateauneuf and definitely favored the late-ripening varieties, especially mourvedre." The uneven ripening that occurred caused the grapes to "look fine on the outside but not so fine inside" and resulted in a brutal (his word was "ridiculous") selection process at harvest. There was even an additional sorting of the grapes after de-stemming, he told me, meaning that in terms of labor and fruit sacrifice this was one of their most demanding and costly ever. Final production was off by about 50%, "which is far into the range of economically unfeasible," he added. Luckily for the Perrins almost 40% of Beaucastel's total plantings are mourvedre, which fared far better than the grenache, "and gave us a lot more breathing room than most people here."