Chateau de Beaucastel Hommage a Jacques Perrin, Chateauneuf-du-Pape 2009

Shockingly good, the 2009 Châteauneuf du Pape Hommage À Jacques Perrin offers an off-the-charts bouquet of Provençal herbs, truffle and wet-dog-like qualities intermixed with classic blueberry, blackberry and cassis fruit. Massive and full-bodied on the palate, with a sheer density and decadence that’s hard to believe, this is a pedal-to-the-metal effort that has the fruit to drink beautifully today, yet the concentration, mid-palate, tannin and balance to age for 3-4 decades. Made from a blend of 60% Mourvedre, 20% Syrah and the rest Counoise and Grenache, this is one of the wines of the vintage.

Potentially the wine of the vintage, the 2009 Beaucastel Chateauneuf du Pape Hommage a Jacques Perrin had just been bottled two weeks before my visit. A wine of extraordinary density, richness, precision and unreal flavour intensity, it reveals abundant gamey, meaty notes intermixed with smoked duck, Provencal herbs, blueberries, blackberries, kirsch and licorice. This loaded, multidimensional, massively concentrated 2009 is much softer than most Hommages. It should be drinkable in 3-4 years and keep for 30-40 years thereafter.

Glass-staining purple. Hypnotic bouquet of black and blue fruits, potpourri and exotic spices. Broad, sappy and strikingly pure, with intense blackberry and boysenberry flavors that reach ever corner of the palate. Rich but lithe wine with a seamless texture and superb finishing clarity. This wine's marriage of power and vivacity is something else.

Always a treat to taste a mature vintage alongside the younger one being released, as a reminder of what this wine can grow into. If this is released alongside to be determined) it will be in tiny quantities. A raspberry and turmeric sweetness, as the structure of the wine has opened and relaxed with age. Dominated by spices and liquorice root, still full of vivacious freshness with raspberry and bilberry fruits, this takes you right to Châteauneuf-du-Pape with its warming stones, its mixed dried herbs, its heat, power and generosity.

Drink 2021 to 2032.