2009 Saint-Joseph

As I was checking out an extremely ancient-looking upright cask in this chilly cellar Pierre Gonon pulled out a flashlight and showed me the date of its manufacture, which had been carved into a horizontal bracing plank: 1802. The Gonons purchased it from Guigal when the Grippat estate was being broken up and they still use it. "We're Ardechois, not Bordelais," Pierre cracked, "so we never throw anything away and we use everything until it's broken, maybe even after that!" As usual, I found some of the purest expressions of syrah of my annual Rhone trip in this cellar, with the 2009 vintage offering a bit more richness than I usually expect here. "That's the vintage, which has made a very strong mark," Pierre noted. Gonon showed me a number of samples from 2011 that had finishesd their malos and it looks to be a superb vintage in the making, by the way. The Gonons' wines all age extremely well, as evidenced by some older whites and a red that I tasted at the end of my visit with Pierre. The 2003 rouge is shockingly fresh, not just for an eight-year-old wine, but for one from one of the hottest vintages on record. It's still on a slow aging curve and, to my taste, at least five years away from reaching its window of maturity. As for the blanc, the '07 is rich and fleshy but has a solid spine of minerality that sharpens and lifts it on the back end. The surprisingly pleasant 2002, from what Gonon called "the most difficult vintage ever" here, is fully mature, with good depth, a honeyed, nutty character and suggestions of orange pith and tarragon. Assuming you have any, it's time to drink up. (Chambers St. Wines, www.chambersstwines.com; Joli Vin Imports, www.jolivin.com; Kermit Lynch Wine Merchant, www.kermitlynch.com)

Jean Gonon told me that 2009 is a vintage that shows "great up-front fruit and then the minerality kicks in. There's a lot of black fruit, as with 2005, but there's an attractive element of finesse to the wine, especially to the tannins." Two thousand eight, he went on, "was a nightmare in terms of work and selection. After crop-thinning and selection after harvest the yield was almost nothing; the quality has surprised us but from a business standpoint it was a joke." Gonon emphasized that "white Saint-Joseph can improve with age just as well as the red, maybe even more so based on older bottles from Raymond Trollat [whose vines the Gonons now work] that we've drunk over the years." I recently had a bottle of 1990 Trollat Saint-Joseph blanc that I bought in 1992 and it was gorgeous, showing no signs of giving up the ghost and acting like a wine that was ten years younger. (Fruit of the Vines, New York, NY; Joli Vin, Berkeley, CA; Kermit Lynch Wine Merchant, Berkeley, CA):