2005 Châteauneuf-du-Pape

"Two thousand six will be noted for its freshness," Vincent Avril told me. "The pHs are excellent and the yield was quite low, about 21 hectoliters per hectare for us. But I am very strict in my pruning and always do a green harvest at the end of July. Then we use a table de trie at harvest, which brings our production down even further." The Avrils employ 40 pickers to cover 35 hectares of vines, with the objective, according to Vincent, "of spreading the harvest out as much as possible to get more variety and to have more components to work with." Avril tries to avoid new wood as much as possible: "We already have plenty of tannins here, and we don't need to add ones from wood. Maybe it's my Burgundy schooling but I really want to get as much finesse as possible, and in Chateauneuf ripeness isn't an issue." He fears that some people serve his wines too cold, by the way, noting that the tannins can be hard if the wine is any colder than 63 or 64 degrees.

Construction on a new bottle room and apartment for Vincent Avril was in full swing when I visited in mid-November, the result of a complete collapse of that wing of the chai in early April of '06. Three thousand bottles were lost, all from the 2003, 2001, 2000 and 1999 vintages. (American fans will console themselves with the fact that many of those bottles were filled with white wine. )Avril adamantly professed his belief in keeping the carbonic gas instead of using sulfur. "Besides, racking tires the wine," he said. Elevage here is exclusively in large, mostly old foudres, "because I really don't like oak tannins. "Speaking of the 2005 vintage, Avril ventured the opinion that it's like 1990, but with better acidity.