2009 Châteauneuf-du-Pape Deus Ex Machina

Vincent and Pascal Maurel and their enologist Philippe Cambie told me that they've been fine-tuning their pressing regimen to get more finesse, "because we don't need to worry about structure owing to our old vines." On the contrary, said Vincent Maurel, "the issue is keeping the structure from running ahead of the fruit, so gentle and careful pressing is essential." Production here will be going up significantly as the Maurels' contracts to sell fruit to negociants continue to expire and their new facility, which is massive by Chateauneuf standards, has more than enough space to handle the task of raising and aging the wines made from their 43 hectares of vines in La Crau.

"Two thousand eight is definitely in the style of 2006 and 2004," according to the Maurel brothers, who have extensive holdings of old vines in some of the primo sites of Chateauneuf, notably in La Crau. They told me that they harvested late in 2008 and that their well-drained vineyards allowed the vines to escape the dangers caused by early September rains, which enabled the Maurels to make their full range of wines, except for the ultra-luxury Sanctus Sanctorum. Production is very low for the 2008s because of severely diminished yields "but the wines are distinct enough and typical enough that we wanted to keep them apart rather than make a single wine."