Deep bright-rimmed ruby. A complex, highly perfumed bouquet evokes ripe red and blue fruit, exotic spice and floral aromas complemented by a vibrant mineral quality that builds as the wine stretches out. Sweet, seamless and broad on the palate, offering concentrated raspberry, boysenberry and spicecake flavors that show superb clarity and focus. The mineral and floral components drive an extremely long, smooth finish given shape by rounded, harmonious tannins. This wine's interplay of depth and clarity is pretty impressive.

A wine well worth the extra effort to track down will be the 2016 Châteauneuf-du-Pape Vieilles Vignes. A step up over the classic cuvée, with both more richness as well as elegance, it offers perfumed aromatics of black raspberries, spice cake, incense, and flowers. Beautifully concentrated, with a terrific mid-palate, it will keep for 15+ years.

Lightly mulled plum, raspberry and boysenberry fruit flavors form the core here, with steeped anise, black tea and juniper hints adding detail. The tight-grained finish shows nice focus.

Nice composure and balance of fruit and oak here. Ripe, dark berries and plums are framed in baking spices and deliver a meaty, dense palate. Big fruit and crisp, intense tannins here. Try in 2020.