2013 Châteauneuf-du-Pape Fiancée

Julien Barraud is now fully settled into his newly constructed winery -- complete with large, tulip-shaped concrete tanks à la Château Cheval Blanc -- just behind his house on the main road at the southern end of the village. He told me that as he gets older, "but maybe still not quite so wise," he is succumbing to the appeal of working with a limited number of bottlings, meaning that he will make a Pure "when it’s completely right in vintage style and a proper yield." Otherwise, he'll do as he did in 2013 and use his old-vine Grenache to bolster his flagship Signature bottling. As for the Fiancée, "it's a wine that will be made in vintages where the harvest is late enough for the Syrah to be great, like in 2013."

The Barroche vineyards lost over 65% of their Grenache fruit in 2013, Julien Barrot told me, "but the Mourvèdre, especially, and the Syrah came in fantastic, which provided some compensation." Needless to say, production was off by quite a bit in '13 and there will be no Pure made, as that wine relies entirely on Grenache. Looking at the bright side again, Julien said that he was able to make a Fiancée bottling in '13 given the high quality of his Syrah, but he told me that he will only include this bottling in his yearly lineup "when there's great Syrah." The style here is moving steadily to what Barrot calls "lower alcohol, more spicy and more floral" because he has become less enamored of "massive wines." In fact, alcohol levels have been steadily declining here in recent years (the '13 Fiancée checks in at a svelte 14.3%, for example) and will likely continue to do so, "but not to where the wines' flavors and intensity are at risk."