2009 Châteauneuf-du-Pape Les Safres

Winemaker Bruno Gaspard averred that given the personalities of recent Chateauneuf vintages he's "an even-year guy right now: 2010, 2008, 2006 and 2004 made the sort of wines that I prefers, but I'll make an exception for 2005, which is a phenomenal vintage that still needs a lot of patience." Unlike 2009, 2007, 2003 and 2001, those even-numbered years made wines that are fine, elegant and expressive, he added. "We're on mostly sand up here and grenache is our main grape so we're more about fruit, flowers and spice than tannins and weight." As we tasted his 2009s and 2010s side by side, he made the point that "when you go from drinking a '10 back to an '09, the '09 almost always looks heavy, even when it's an elegant one." By the way, Gaspard believes that "the break point for the traditional and modern Chateauneuf eras was 2000. Before that, you mostly had wines that were firm and red-fruited, with drier tannins, more acidity and less alcohol. From 2000 on the emphasis switched to later harvests, higher sugars, lower acidity, darker fruit and higher alcohol." Vintage 2010, he added, is in the pre-2000 style but with elegant tannins. "They'll be expressive on release but they have the balance to age extremely well." The 2009s, on the other hand, "will be at their best in their first decade after bottling and may not outlive the 2008s, which I love but which are misunderstood because they aren't dramatic enough." (importers include North Berkeley Imports, Berkeley, CA and Domaine Select Wines Estates, New York, NY)

There is only one bottling of Chateauneuf du Pape here in 2008, and it's a pretty seductive, open-knit wine already. Winemaker Bruno Gaspard called the vintage "a rare style nowadays because of the regularity of hot vintages. It's in the style of years like 1986, 1991, 1993, 1996 and 1997, meaning northern in character, not Provencal." Gaspard told me that "in 2009 quality was entirely dependent on the ripeness of the grape skins. The seeds ripened before the skins did, in mid-August actually, and you had to wait for the skins to catch up. If you harvested before that, your wines would be hard and the tannins dry." He emphasized that because of the estate's situation, on sandy soils, "late rain isn't a bad thing because it drains off before any serious damage can be done. So it's less of a concern for us than for people who have a lot of clay. On the other hand, if there isn't enough rain during the season, like in 2003, we've got more problems than vineyards whose clay allows for water retention."