2020 Gigondas

Two thousand twenty marked the 120th anniversary of Domaine du Terme. Eleven of the 25 hectares the family owns are in Gigondas, in the foothills of the Dentelles de Montmirail. Today the estate is run by the sharply focused and confident Anne-Marie Gaudin Riché. The wines here have never been better, and they were excellent in the past. Roughly 90% of the fruit is de-stemmed, and the wines are slowly raised in the cellar, anywhere from two to three years of aging in a combination of large oak casks and concrete vats. The extended time before bottling results in softened tannins, to some degree, by the time they are released. These are wines built for cellaring, so they reward patience or, at the very least, they need decanting by the impatient.