Winemaker Notes
Pale gold with green tints. This refined and balanced white wine offers notes of lemon and orchard fruits with floral and herbal aromas.
Pair with grilled fish or bouillabaisse.
Blend: 43% Roussanne, 30% Clairette, 25% Grenache Blanc, 2% Borboulenc
Professional Ratings
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Jeb Dunnuck
The classic cuvée is the 2021 Châteauneuf Du Pape Blanc, which is based on 43% Roussanne, 30% Clairette, 25% Grenache Blanc, and 2% Bourboulenc. It's brilliant stuff, offering lots of bright lemon and pineapple-like fruits as well as white flowers, honeysuckle, and a kiss of chalky minerality. Beautiful on the palate as well, it's medium to full-bodied, with integrated acidity and just flawless balance. It ranks with the finest whites in the vintage and is well worth seeking out. It should have over a decade of prime drinking, although there's no need to delay gratification.
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Decanter
Lovely cooling glycerol glides across the palate, cut through with incisive acidity. Zesty lime squeezed over pear tarte tatin. Medium- to full-bodied, really energetic, balanced and finely detailed. Seriously good. Organically grown across three lieux-dits: La Crau, La Nerthe and La Rigole. It's principally aged in a variety of size and age of oak barrels for six months, including 20% new oak.
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Wine Spectator
Focused and pure, with ripe melon and green fig interwoven with orange blossoms and chamomile, all edged in smoke and flint. The creamy palate is held in check by a firming mineral spine and quinine notes. Roussanne, Clairette, Grenache Blanc and Bourboulenc.
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Vinous
The 2021 Châteauneuf-du-Pape Blanc displays delicate aromas of spring blossom, jasmine, yellow apple, pear, pastry, melon and cedar. This delicious 2021 white is medium to full-bodied, well-balanced, wrapping up with a clean finish.
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.