2012 Xavier Vignon Cotes Du Rhone 100% 750 ml

"What do you think about 'ONE HUNDRED PERCENT?'"

Over dinner at his charming Le Barroux home, Xavier Vignon walked us through his signature winegrowing approach. “Particularly in the warm vintages, we have to be careful about over-ripeness,” said our host, one of France’s most brilliant enologists. “If we wait too long to pick, acids plummet. In 2012, we had to be extra careful with the harvest date. When we made the right call, 2012 is a mirror image of 2010. We got everything — concentration, tannin, and acidity.”

As Isabelle Vignon sprinkled fresh truffles on the bruschetta, Xavier uncorked an unlabeled bottle and poured a dark-ruby red into Zalto crystal. “This, you might say, is the wine that got away from me in 2012. The fruit came from 110-year-old vines. In the last days before harvest, the sugars exploded. One day we were at 24 Brix. Forty-eight hours later we were over 25.5. We were too late … or so I thought at the time.”

At 5 p.m., Xavier poured the first few ounces of his mysterious Côtes du Rhône. Initially, the wine was as we had been led to believe — hugely concentrated, filled with black raspberry jam, doused with kirsch. Almost too much. But at 6 p.m., this gigantic red wine (14.5% alcohol) had morphed, the preserves giving way to more secondary aromas and flavors — garrigue, potpourri, smoke, and tobacco. The finish somehow firmed up, showing off surprising muscle and sturdiness. By 7, when the grilled lamb with rosemary came to the table, Xavier’s ancient-vine red was almost unrecognizable. At once bigger, weightier, and more dense, velour-like in texture, the core was no longer Port-like, but powerful and tightly wound. Refreshing tannins emerged. Acids were almost impossibly firm.

As we polished off the last of this stupefying, chameleon-like powerhouse, we asked Xavier the most obvious of questions. “How are you going to label it? You can’t just call it ‘Côtes du Rhône.’ No one will understand.”

The enologist whose winemaking hands are all over a dozen 100-point Châteauneuf-du-Papes laughed and shrugged his shoulders. “It has almost too much of everything. Un erreur parfait — a perfect mistake. What do you think about ‘ONE HUNDRED PERCENT’?”

If you’re a southern Rhône enthusiast, enamored of the most voluptuous, darkly concentrated ancient-vine blends, Xavier Vignon’s 2012 Côtes du Rhône “100%” is one of the most alluring reds of the last five years. $25 on release. Just $16 this morning — as WineAccess lends a helping hand in Châteauneuf-du-Pape. Shipping included on 6.