Château de Beaucastel : Hommage à Jacques Perrin 2018

It was clear right out of the gate that 2018 would be an excellent vintage of Hommage à Jacques Perrin, and two years on you can see how it is shaping up to be both powerful and self-contained. The fruit character is savoury and mouthwatering, with light flicks of spiced cedar, garrigue, sour cherry and grilled raspberry. This is so good, maintaining grip right through the palate and stretching out the flavour with a saline kissed finish. Organic.

The wine of the vintage. Compelling in every sense of the word, the wine is incredibly dark in color. The aromatics kick off with an amazing display of spices, herbs, wet earth, leaf, pepper, grilled meat, black raspberry, kirsch, and plum. The weight, density, and intensity on the palate coat your taste receptors, yet it retains its lush, silky texture. The seamless finish sails past the 60-second mark. This should age for decades.

Lastly, the 2018 Châteauneuf-du-Pape Hommage à Jacques Perrin showed beautifully, and while it doesn’t hit the heights of the 2001, 2007, 2010, 2016, or 2017, it’s a beautiful expression of this cuvée that deserves a place in the cellar. Revealing a deep purple hue as well as a kaleidoscope-like array of blueberries, charred meat, graphite, ground pepper, violets, and garrigue, it hits the palate with full-bodied richness, a layered, seamless texture, building tannins, and a magical finish. It doesn’t have the sheer wealth of material found in truly great vintages and stays compact and focused on the palate, but it has beautiful depth of fruit and intensity as well as a seamlessness to its tannins. I suspect it will be relatively approachable by this cuvée’s standards, yet it still has enough structure and tannins to warrant a solid 7–8 years of bottle age. Given its balance, freshness, and purity, it’s going to age beautifully.

Inky ruby. Deep-pitched red and dark berry liqueur, candied violet, licorice and Moroccan spice scents show superb detail, with a smoky, mineral undertone. Densely packed and focused on the palate, offering powerful blueberry, bitter cherry and black raspberry flavors, along with chewing tobacco, floral pastille and fruitcake notes. Hangs on with serious persistence, steadily building tannins and reverberating florality. Two-thousand eighteen was a superb vintage for Mourvèdre, and it shows here, with that variety making up about a third of the blend.