2006 Châteauneuf-du-Pape Les Safres

According to winemaker Bruno Gaspard, the summer of 2007 was a lot like 2003-"with the exception that the heat backed off at night, which allowed sugars to rise slowly rather than blasting up. " The result, he believes, "is that the wines have more freshness and the tannins are more harmonious because the skins were perfectly ripe, not like leather. " He describes 2007 as "a mix of the elegance of 2006 and the power but not the muscle of 2005. " While he thinks that it will be very tempting to drink these wines young, "that would be a mistake, because they have superb material and will live for a very long time. "

"we get less color up here in the north of the appellation because of all the sand, but we get great perfume," winemaker Bruno Gaspard told me when I commented on the light hue but explosive bouquet of his wines. "The 2006 season featured huge diurnal shifts: the nights were really cool and the vines slept well-unlike 2003, when the nights seemed as hot as the days, and the vines never slept. Neither did we!" The new crop of wines reminds Gaspard of 2004: "Still extremely elegant but with more body. In 2005 everything is huge: body, fruit, tannins. These need to be forgotten in the cellar." He also told me that he thinks that "2004 and 2006 are vintages that express terroir more clearly than does 2005," which he notes is hardly a criticism of '05.