Le Vieux Donjon Chateauneuf-du-Pape 2005
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"The 2005 Chateauneuf du Pape has a more saturated dark ruby/purple color and an elegant nose of licorice, roasted meat, sweet blackberries and cherries, as well as cedar and spice. The wine is medium to full-bodied, has good acidity, and seems to convey a sense of both elegance and power with beautiful balance and purity. This wine will need 2-4 years of bottle age and should drink well for up to 15 or so years. One of the most traditionally run estates of Chateauneuf du Pape, and consistently producers of excellent wines, Lucien and Marie-Joseph Michel consistently make the best selections in the cellar, and only bottle one Chateauneuf du Pape, resisting the current fashion for producing cuvees of old vines."
-Robert Parker, Wine Advocate 90-93
Professional Ratings
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Wine Spectator
Juicy and spicy, with lots of raspberry ganache and blueberry notes offset by hints of mulled spices, black tea and fig cake. Really picks up steam on the finish, with a racy, mouthwatering minerality. Should age beautifully. Drink now through 2025.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Vieux Donjon has produced a classic Châteauneuf du Pape in 2005, and it has the focused, structured feel of the vintage, yet avoids the harsh tannin that’s found in a lot of cuvees. Exhibiting impressive notes of peppered meats, tapenade, sweet spice, iron and garrigue, with a core of sweet Grenache fruit, this beauty is medium to full-bodied, concentrated and textured on the palate, with superb overall balance. It’s enjoyable today, but will continue to evolve nicely for another decade or longer. Drink date: 2015-2020.
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Le Vieux Donjon, as it exists today, was created in 1979 with the marriage of Lucien and Marie José Michel. Both Lucien and Marie José's parents owned vineyards in the region, and those holding were combined to form Le Vieux Donjon. The domaine covers fourteen hectares of vineyards (all farmed organically), thirteen planted to red grapes and one planted to white. The Michel's holdings are primarily in the North and Northwest of the AOC, but they also have small plots in the Southwest and East. Their most important parcel is Pialons, and the grapes from the 2008 come from that parcel as well as those in Cabrieres, Bois de Boursan, Les Marines and Le Mourre de Gaude. The soils are mainly limestone and clay, and are studded with the famed galets roulé, the round, rust-colored stones which were left behind after the retreat of the Alpine glaciers which once covered the region.
Since 2008 Claire Fabre has been the winemaker at Le Vieux Donjon. She is the third generation of the Michel family which was founded by the father of Lucien Michel, Marcel Michel, who did the first bottling at his domain in 1966. Since 1979 Marie José and Lucien Michel have run the property. Claire is married to another winegrower, Adrien Fabre of Domaine la Florane in Visan. In 2013 Claire's brother François joined her at the domain, and the two of them became officially responsible for the property together with their mother Marie Michel.