What is it about Chateauneuf-du-Pape?

I have no idea, but last night Tracy, Marci, and I tasted a truly fantastic bottle of Chateauneuf, plus a less impressive Cotes du Rhone for comparison. The wines were:

2007 Chateau de Beaucastel Chateauneuf-du-Pape ($90)
2008 Domaine Monpertuis Cotes du Rhone ($15)

Chateauneuf is an appelation that allows for 13 grape varieties, and "classic" wines from this region, like the Beaucastel, sometimes plant and use all of them. In this wine, the wine's Website explains, the two main grapes here are Mourvedre (about 30%, giving tannins and structure) and Grenache (30%, offering the softer, rounder parts). There is also Syrah (10%), Muscardin (5%), and Vaccarese (5%), all offering some kind of color, spiciness, or whatever. They add a small amount of Cinsault, usually included to develop the nose, and seven other varietals, in very small quantities, that make up Chateauneufs.

This means, too, that this Chateau has in its fields, growing all together like a happy family, all 13 grapes. They're all sucking water and nutrients from the same soil, and getting pretty much the same sun. Then, they're harvested and fermented separately (many undergoing malolactic fermentation for that milkiness), and then blended together before being held another year prior to bottling.

In any case, this is a most delicious example of this kind of wine. Very full in the mouth and luscious. The tastes aren't really as distinct as you might think. For me, at least, there are not a ton of individual flavor notes popping out; rather, the wine settles in and kind of relaxes. It is a pleasure engine made of soft parts. It's calm. Really beautiful wine, happy and radiant.

The Monpertuis, for contrast, is from the same general area, and made of some of the same grapes, though by no means all--I think this wine is mostly Grenache and Mourvedre, with a little Syrah thrown in. It's fine wine, but in contrast very thin and pale. The metaphor most effective here is a spatial one--where the Beaucastel had depth and dimension, the Monpertuis was flat and lean. Where the Beaucastel opened up and expanded in the mouth as it paused there before being swallowed, the Monpertuis nervously rocketed through, lithe and unchanged.

In a way, it's good to know that significant price differences do in fact make some kind of aesthetic sense. Still, I'm somewhat off-put by the knowledge that to get this kind of placid brilliance from a wine one might need to spend so much. Still, it's got to be worth it, sometimes, to just taste this kind of thing.