Fun loving Chateauneuf producer Julien Barrot has a hugely enjoyable time making some of the most delightfully hedonistic wines on the planet. His entire ambition and hope is that when you`re drinking his wines you`re having a ball. Southern Rhone Grenache is the name of the game, careful extraction of perfectly ripe fruit is the only rule and apart from the imperative of your total happiness that`s it.

Julien is irritatingly young to be achieving quite so much, so soon, but his two cuvées from 32 incredibly low yielding hectares of Grenache, Mourvedre, Cinsault and so on. If you think the wines bear a passing resemblance to Chateau Rayas, that`s perhaps because they`re grown on the sandy soils adjacent. Though Francois Reynaud of Rayas has a reputation for - let us say curmudgeonliness and idiosyncracy that completely eludes Julien. (CW 14/05/14)