Winemaker Notes
Enjoy with powerful dishes such as Daube Provençale with black olives, BBQ steak with béarnaise sauce, black truffle and foie gras parcels or melting chocolate puddings.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
What should be a terrific value, the 2015 Châteauneuf du Pape Domaine Barville checks in as a mix of 80% Grenache, 15% Syrah and 5% Mourvèdre that was completely destemmed and aged in a combination of foudre, new barrels, old barrels and concrete tanks. It’s a charming, ripe, even sexy barrel sample that has terrific notes of plums, blackberries, garrigue and violets. Drink this soft, pleasure-bent beauty anytime over the coming 4-6 years.
Range: 91-93 -
Wine Enthusiast
Restrained but ripe, this elegant wine offers concentrated black-cherry and plum flavors shaded in tones of granite, licorice and dried herb. It's rich and expansive on the palate, with a warm, comforting heft. Fresh acidity and fine-grained tannins frame a long finish. It's lovely now but likely to show best from 2020.
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Wine Spectator
Warm cinnamon and chestnut notes lead the way in this pleasantly rustic version, with dried cherry, plum and red currant fruit at the core and a lingering, tobacco- and brick dust?infused finish. Best from 2018 through 2028.
With bold fruit flavors and accents of sweet spice, Grenache, Syrah and Mourvèdre form the base of the classic Rhône Red Blend, while Carignan, Cinsault and Counoise often come in to play. Though they originated from France’s southern Rhône Valley, with some creative interpretation, Rhône blends have also become popular in other countries. Somm Secret—Putting their own local spin on the Rhône Red Blend, those from Priorat often include Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon. In California, it is not uncommon to see Petite Sirah make an appearance.
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.