1995 Châteauneuf-du-Pape Marie Beurrier

Bonneau, always a brutally honest judge of his own wines and Chateauneuf vintages, has had a trio of strong crops since '98. He is enamored of the purity of fruit his vines yielded in 2000, although he not yet sure if the wines will show enough sheer gras for greatness. The '99s, he says, are less dense, but display good freshness and structure for aging. And '98, Bonneau is confident, is at the exalted level of 1990, although he won't even think about bottling the first batch for at least another three years (some of his '98 lots were just finished fermenting their sugars!). An enologist turned loose in this rabbit warren of a cellar would have an infarction: he'd rant about protecting pHs, replacing ancient barrels, racking the wines more often, bottling as much as years earlier. Some of these wines would no doubt be better for earlier bottling, but the wine world would lose one of its most idiosyncratic throwback examples.