Beaucastel

The fitting capping stone of the whole trip! They only accept visits by appointment, and this one was set up by Ivonne from NJ. We spent two and a half hours with Fabrice, the somelier of the Domaine... who gave us the rundown on the philosophy of this inovative vineyard, how they make their wine, with emphasis on the fact that you can't fix what went wrong in the grape with vinification, and then treated us to a full horizontal of their production from 2003, a couple dozen wines, finishing with their star cuvée, the "hommage à Jacques Perrin", from 2001, which was the best thing we tasted in the whole trip. Beaucastel was founded by a scientist, who came to own it because it was in his wife's bridal, and she a scion of an olive oil family. He defined a blend of cépage to plant, but the son, Jacques Perrin, is the one who realized his father's vision in the reality of an exceptional, if atypical, Chateauneuf-du-Pape. The whole idea is like a fusion of what we saw at Cabriere and Pierre André, with bio-dynamism and respect for nature's way pushed to a logical, systematic and reasoned plenitude, and yet the finest technology to flash-heat the Grenache to break the poly-phenolics which make it so susceptible to oxydation. They are not afraid of microbiology, and use only "wild" yeasts naturally present on the grapes for fermentation. In any case, their wines, particularly when tasted with such an ardent, passionate and moving advocate as Fabrice, have a special strength and balance which we truly enjoyed. It was particularly interesting to see what were notes of black olives in some of the simpler wines, evolve into richer, more complex notes of leather and animal to culminate into a blinding olfactory memory of a horse's hide after a ride... Wines are wonderful! Location : Chateauneuf-du-Pape, France