'Plump and beguiling finesse' - drinkrhone.com

2014 was a very good year for a couple of categories of Chateauneuf-du-Pape. One is the whites, which benefitted from the cool summer to produce immensely successful complex and fresh wines that will drink beautifully young and age well. The other seems to be Chateau de Beaucastel. 2014 was a remarkable growing season for many reasons. Not a breath of mistral the whole summer for one, and 140mm of rain just in July, to name but two.

Over in Courthezon (as elsewhere in the Rhone) it was a very busy year for vineyard workers. After a warm spring and very good flowering the calendar was marked for an early harvest. Then summer came, cool, overcast and wet. The sort of weather that will find out the best and the most problematic terroirs. In 2014 Chateau de Beaucastel holds the winning hand. Often struggling in times of drought as their free-draining vineyards don't hold onto much water, in 2014 these fields of sand and rock came into their own. Beaucastel's red wines were also aided by the high proportion of Mourvedre, which ripened slowly and perfectly in the late Indian summer. They are very enthusiastic about their adoption of biodynamics a few years ago and attribute a lot of their success this year to that.

Our favourite Rhone authority is John Livingstone-Learmonth of drinkrhone.com and not just because he's been visiting and studying the area for over forty years and writing about it for almost as long. He knows three generations of many families and many of their vineyards as intimately. 2014 in his words: 'Finesse hits town after an absence of decades; plump and beguiling finesse.' /CW

'Not yet bottled, the 2014 Chateauneuf du Pape is one of the few inky colored wines in the vintage. Medium to full-bodied, concentrated and ripe with notable tannin, it offers beautiful notes of blackberry, shitake mushrooms, licorice and pepper meats. It plays in the 2014 vintage's forward, supple nature, but has real depth and concentration. I don't think it will be the longest lived Beaucastel, but it will have 15-20 years of overall longevity. 92-94 points' - Jeb Dunnuck, eRobertParker.com,

Offered subject to remaining unsold; available winter 2016

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