2016 Domaine du Vieux Telegraphe Chateauneuf-du-Pape La Crau 750 ml

No Châteauneuf-du-Pape Has Ever Impressed the Critics More

The 2016 vintage was a record-breaking season for the Southern Rhône: Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate gave the 2016 Rhône vintage 98 points, a score that’s never been bested in the history of Advocate’s ratings. The New York Times called the wines in a recent lineup of 2016s, “characterized by potent fruit flavors...balanced by savory herbal flavors as well.”

No surprise, then, that Domaine du Vieux Télégraphe’s scores tell the same story: The 2016 La Crau earned a 98-point rating—the wine’s highest ever—from James Suckling, who praised the its “resounding finesse and equilibrium.” Same story with the 97 from Rhône maven Jeb Dunnuck—no Vieux Télégraphe has ever impressed him more. And the 96-point score from Wine Advocate says it explicitly: this is “undoubtedly one of the top vintages” of Vieux Télégraphe. The 2016 bottling is a saturated purple-garnet color, and shows heady and savory aromatics, tons of ripe and dried fruit, and telltale Rhône licorice and tapenade. We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again right now: 2016 is the year to buy the icons of the southern Rhône.

Wines of the Rhône certainly don’t come any more iconic than Vieux Télégraphe, whose story begins in the 1890s, when Henri Brunier gave his son Hippolyte a gift of land on the plateau of La Crau. This piece of land, which was once home to a large signal tower, seemed less than ideal for quality grape production, but Hippolyte planted grapes anyway. Hippolyte’s son, Jules, later expanded the estate, and named it for its former defining feature: Vieux Télégraphe was born. Its current stewards, the sixth-generation brothers Frédéric and Daniel Brunier, have been at the helm since 1988.

At La Crau, dry-farmed vines reach down, through layers of round white stones called galets roulé to reach the red clay molasse beneath. This flagship bottling consists of fruit from vines that average 70 years old, and their age and strength lend incredible concentration to the finished wine. The wine then matures for over 20 months in large oak foudres before being bottled unfiltered to retain its full color and aromatic complexity. The resulting wine is ripe, savory, and generous in its youth but certainly built to last.

Vieux Télégrahpe La Crau is always an icon, but in vintages like 2016—the likes of which we may not see for years and years—it is more: It is a cellar essential, and one that is sure to go fast.