2013 Châteauneuf-du-Pape

François Perrin told me that while he thinks the 2014s from the region will be highly appealing to many people for their often "massive fruit and extroverted personality," the 2013s, at their best, "will be the ones for people who like structure and have the patience" to age them. This venerable estate's wines always contain a high percentage of grapes other than Grenache, so a year with a short crop of that variety "doesn't really throw us or the blend of the wine off," he told me. "We like to work with Mourvèdre, especially, so years like '13 that favor late-ripening grapes are just fine with us," he added.

Marc Perrin described the Beaucastel 2013s as "very northern [Rhône] in style" because of their emphasis on dark fruits and the higher-than-normal amount of "darker varieties" in the blends. That's true of the vast majority of Châteauneufs from the vintage, he told me, adding that "the wines are going to have interesting aging curves" because the varietal makeup of wines across the appellation "is unlike what anybody is used to. with so little Grenache in the final blends." Speaking to the 2012s, Perrin told me that it's a vintage quite a bit like 2010 "except that the tannins are rounder, which will make the wines both accessible and ageworthy." He mused that it's almost impossible to find a vintage in recent times that's not at least acceptable, "2002 being the big exception," a fact he attributes to warmer weather and to vastly improved farming practices, not to mention greater selection in the vineyards, at the sorting tables and in the cellar. "Think about it," he asked me rhetorically, "how many bad, much less really bad wines do you find in Châteauneuf now? What is average today would have been considered great just 20 years ago."