M. Chapoutier, Chateauneuf-du-Pape, Barbe Rac 2017

The 2017 Châteauneuf Du Pape Barbe Rac is brilliant and up there with some of the finest vintages to date of this cuvée. Based all on Grenache from a single lieu-dit in the southwest of the appellation called the Barbe d'Asne and brought up in concrete tanks, it offers up a gorgeous nose of kirsch liqueur, ground pepper, garrigue, and graphite. Deep, rich, and powerful on the palate, with tons of sweet fruit, it needs 4-5 years of bottle age and will keep for two decades or more.

Produced from yields of just 15 hectoliters per hectare, the 2017 Chateauneuf du Pape Barbe Rac is a powerful, 100% Grenache wine raised in concrete. It's a big, full-bodied beauty, loaded with scents of kirsch and framboise, stuffed with ripe tannins and with a finish that lasts for several minutes. Give it 5 years in the cellar and drink it over the next decade or so.

Full bright-hued ruby. Highly perfumed, expansive aromas of ripe red berries, candied cherry exotic spices and lavender pick up a smoky mineral note as the wine opens up. Chewy and focused on the palate, offering concentrated black raspberry, bitter cherry and floral pastille flavors that show a suave interplay of richness and vivacity. Turns sweeter on the impressively long, penetrating finish, which features steadily building tannins and insistent cherry, lavender and spice qualities. All concrete.