2012 Condrieu

Since the practice here isn't to release wines on a predictable schedule, a cellar visit offers the chance to taste a wide-ranging set of vintages, from bottle as well as cask:current releases here stretch back to 2007, for example.Philippe Guigal summed up the most recent vintages in the northern Rhone as "a kind of crazy show of extremes:'07 fruity and supple, '08 bright and lean, '09 ripe and exotic, '10 structured and masculine, '11 a more round and fruity version of '08, and '12 a more friendly and open '10."In other words, he said, "we've seen almost every possible style that you can imagine in a really short time, without any of the vintages being truly bad."That's not to say that he doesn't have his preferences (that would be 2010, for the patient) and, from what I gleaned from our conversation, 2009, which he called "a vintage for wine lovers while 2010 is for wine collectors."