Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Decanter
So beautifully generous on the palate, so rich but so fresh, with great salinity – really mouthwatering. That's what makes this vintage so special: generosity and freshness plus acidity and salinity makes for great vibrancy and impact. Hugely impressive.
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Jeb Dunnuck
Based largely on Roussanne with smaller amounts of Grenache Blanc, Clairette, and Bourboulenc, the 2024 Châteauneuf Du Pape Blanc shows vibrant white peach, honeyed melon, flowers, spice, and crushed stone. It's medium to full-bodied, with a fresh, focused mouthfeel, notable purity, integrated acidity, and a great finish. This beauty will drink nicely over the coming 30 years if well stored. Drink 2025-2054.
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James Suckling
A fresh, balanced and velvety white with lemons, white peaches, warm herbs and mild spices on the nose. It's medium- to full-bodied with an oily texture to the flavorful mid-palate. Baked lemons meet a lift of verbena and spices. Plenty of weight here, with a delicious, caressing texture to the peachy finish. Drink or hold.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Wafting from the glass with a fresh, perfumed bouquet of spices, white flowers, pear, peach and angelica, the 2024 Chateauneuf du Pape Blanc possesses a medium- to full-bodied, dense and sappy palate framed by a gastronomic bitterness, concluding with a long, saline and lively finish. More tensile than in the past, this is a strikingly pure white wine.
Full-bodied and flavorful, white Rhône blends originate from France’s Rhône Valley. Today these blends are also becoming popular in other regions. Typically some combination of Grenache Blanc, Marsanne, Roussanne and Viognier form the basis of a white Rhône blend with varying degrees of flexibility depending on the exact appellation. Somm Secret—In the Northern Rhône, blends of Marsanne and Roussanne are common but the south retains more variety. Marsanne, Roussanne as well as Bourboulenc, Clairette, Picpoul and Ugni Blanc are typical.
Famous for its full-bodied, seductive and spicy reds with flavor and aroma characteristics reminiscent of black cherry, baked raspberry, garrigue, olive tapenade, lavender and baking spice, Châteauneuf-du-Pape is the leading sub-appellation of the southern Rhône River Valley. Large pebbles resembling river rocks, called "galets" in French, dominate most of the terrain. The stones hold heat and reflect it back up to the low-lying gobelet-trained vines. Though the galets are typical, they are not prominent in every vineyard. Chateau Rayas is the most obvious deviation with very sandy soil.
According to law, eighteen grape varieties are allowed in Châteauneuf-du-Pape and most wines are blends of some mix of these. For reds, Grenache is the star player with Mourvedre and Syrah coming typically second. Others used include Cinsault, Counoise and occasionally Muscardin, Vaccarèse, Picquepoul Noir and Terret Noir.
Only about 6-7% of wine from Châteauneuf-du-Pape is white wine. Blends and single-varietal bottlings are typically based on the soft and floral Grenache Blanc but Clairette, Bourboulenc and Roussanne are grown with some significance.
The wine of Chateauneuf-du-Pape takes its name from the relocation of the papal court to Avignon. The lore says that after moving in 1309, Pope Clément V (after whom Chateau Pape-Clément in Pessac-Léognan is named) ordered that vines were planted. But it was actually his successor, John XXII, who established the vineyards. The name however, Chateauneuf-du-Pape, translated as "the pope's new castle," didn’t really stick until the 19th century.